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COPYRIGHT DEPOSfT. 



THE CHOICE OF LIFE 




Georgette 
Leblanc 



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THE In. 
CHOICE OF LIFE 



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BY 

GEORGETTE 



LEBLANC 



II 












TRANSLATED BY 
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA de MATTOS 









NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1914 



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iiiti 



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Copyright, 1914, by 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

Published, March, 1914 



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SEP 21 1914 

©CI.A38045G 



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Women are ever divided by a miserable 
distrust, whereas all their weaknesses inter- 
twined might make for their lives a crown of 
love and strength and beauty. . . . 

How one of them strove to deliver her un- 
happy friend, the words which she spoke to 
her, the examples which she set before her, the 
joys which she offered her: these are what I 
have tried to record in this book. 

G. L. 



PART THE FIRST 



Chapter I 



HERE in the garden, close to the quiet house, I sit 
thinking of that strange meeting in the village. A 
blackbird at regular intervals sings the same refrain, 
which is taken up by others in the distance. The 
lily's chalice gleams under the blazing sun ; and the 
humbler flowers meekly droop their heads. White 
butterflies are everywhere, flitting restlessly hither 
and thither. So fierce is the splendour of the day 
that I cannot raise my eyes to the summit of the 
trees ; and my quivering lids show me the whole sky 
through my lashes. 

Thereupon it seems to me that the emotion which 
bursts from my heart, like a too-brilliant light, com- 
pels me to close the shutters of my brain as well. 
In my mind, even as before my eyes, distances are 
lessened and I see stretched before me that more or 
less illusive goal which we would all fain reach in the 
desires of our finer selves. 



«§* 10 *§•> 

This idea is soothing to me, for, in my eagerness 
to act, I am tired of demanding from my reason 
reasons which it cannot vouchsafe me. 

Is there anything definite amid the uncertainty of 
these blind efforts, these unaccountable impulses, 
which have so often, ever since the first awakening 
of my unconsciousness, urged me towards other 
women? What have I wanted hitherto? What was 
it that I hoped when I stretched out my hands to 
them, when I looked upon their lives, when I 
searched their hearts, when at times I changed the 
very nature of their strivings? I did not know 
then ; and even now I do not succeed in explaining to 
myself the fever that makes my thoughts tingle and 
burn. I do not understand, I do not know. How 
did that dream stand firm amid the total annihilation 
of unprofitable illusions? Is there then an element 
of reality, a definite truth that encourages me, 
though I do not discern it? 

I see myself going forward recklessly, like a trav- 
eller who knows that there is somewhere a goal and 
who makes for it blindly, with the same assurance as 
though the goal stood bright and luminous on a 
mountain-top. 

My only apology for these continual excursions 



<•§* 11 *§* 

is that I lay claim to no rigidity of purpose; and I 
should almost be ashamed to come with principles and 
axioms to those whom I am carrying away. Then 
why alter the course of their destiny? Why appeal 
to their sympathy and their confidence? What bet- 
ter lot have I to offer them and what can I hope for 
even if they respond? Certainly I wish them fairer 
and more perfect, freed from their childish dread of 
criticism, armed with a prouder and more personal 
conception of honour than the code which is laid 
upon them, respectful of their life and also encom- 
passing it with infinite indulgence and kindness. But 
is not that a wild ideal? In my memory, I still see 
them smiling at it, those radiant faces which all my 
sermons could not cloud, or which, vainly striving to 
understand them, never reflected anything but their 
crudest and most extravagant features ! 

The newcomer with the grave countenance, the new 
soul divined beneath a beauty that pleases me, will she 
at long last teach me how much is possible and 
realisable in the vague ideal to which I pay homage, 
without as yet being able to define it? 

I dare not hope. 

Hitherto, events have not justified me any more 
than my reason. 



«§* 12 *§► 

The swift walker goes alone upon his road; there 
is never any but his shadow to follow him. 

I know how conscious we are of our weakness when 
we try to bring our energies into action ; and I know 
that my pride will suffer, for I have never seen my 
footprint on the sand without pitying myself. . . . 



Those who are close to our soul have no need of 
our words to understand it; and those who are far 
removed from it do not hear us speak. Then for 
whom do we speak, alas ? 

The blackbird's song describes precious waves in 
the still air ; pearls are scattered over the blue sky. 

The lily's whiteness ascends like a fervent prayer ; 
the bees make haste; the careless butterflies enjoy 
their little day. Near me, a tiny ant exhausts her- 
self in a task too heavy for her strength. Lowly and 
excellent counsellors, does not each of them set me 
the example of her humble efforts? 



Chapter II 



It was yesterday. When I woke, the cornfield 
under my windows, which seemed a steadfast sea of 
gold, had already half disappeared. The scythes 
flashed in the sun; and the ripe corn fell in great 
unresisting masses. 

The smallest details of that meeting are present 
in my memory; and I do not weary of living every 
moment of it over again. The air was cool. I still 
feel the caress of my sleeves, which the wind set flut- 
tering over my arms. I drank the breeze in great 
gulps. It filled me, it revived me from head to foot. 
My skirts hampered me and I went slowly, holding my 
hat in both hands before my face and vaguely guided 
by the little patches of landscape that showed 
through the loose straw: a glimpse of blue sky, of 
swaying tree-tops, smoking chimneys and a dim 
horizon. 

I have come to the far end of the field, where the 
reapers are. It is the hour of the first meal. The 



«§* 14 si- 
men have laid down their scythes, the girls have ceased 
to bind the sheaves and all are sitting on the slope 
beside the road. 

Curious, I go closer still. A young woman, whom 
the others call " mademoiselle," is kneeling a few 
steps away from me, in front of the provision-basket ; 
she has her back turned to me and is distributing 
slices of bread and cream-cheese to the labourers ; she 
hands the jug filled with cider to the one nearest her, 
who drinks and sends it round. For one second the 
movement of her arm passes between the sky and my 
gaze, which wavers a little owing to the brilliancy of 
the light; and that arm dewy with heat appears to 
me admirably moulded, with bold, pure lines. 

She is dressed like her companions, in a coarse linen 
skirt, whose uncouth folds disguise her hips, and a 
calico smock imprisoned in a black laced bodice, a 
sort of shapeless, barbarous cuirass. A broad- 
brimmed straw hat, adorned with a faded ribbon, 
casts its shadow on her shoulders; but, when she 
bends her head, I see the glint of her hair, whose 
tightly bound and twisted masses shine like coils of 
gold. 

The rather powerful neck is beautifully modelled. 
It is delicately hollowed at the nape, where a little 



«§* 15 *§* 

silver chain accentuates the gentle curve. I can 
see almost nothing of her figure under the clumsy 
clothes, but its proportions appear to me accurate 
and fairly slender. 

I feel inclined to go away without a word; my 
fastidious eyes bring me misgivings. When the first 
taste is good, why risk a second? But one of the 
reapers has seen me. He bids me a friendly good- 
morning; and, before I have time to answer, she has 
turned round. 

It is so rare, in our country districts, to see a beau- 
tiful woman that, for an instant, I blame the charm 
of the hour and accuse the friendly light of com- 
plicity. But little by little her perfection overcomes 
my doubts ; and, the more I watch her, the lovelier 
I think her. The almost statuesque slowness of her 
movements, the vigorous line of her body, the glad 
colours that adorn her mouth, her cheeks and her bare 
arms seem to make her share in the health of the soil. 
The fair human sheaf is bound to nature like the 
golden sheaves that surround it. 

Without stirring, we two stand looking at each 
other face to face. 



<§* 16 *§> 



O miracle of beauty, sovran of happiness and mag- 
net of wandering eyes, that day it shone in the noon- 
day sun like a star on the forehead of that unhappy 
life ; and it and it alone stayed my steps ! 

But for it, should I have dreamt, in the presence 
of that humble girl, of one of those quests which 
appeal to the hearts of us women, hearts fed on 
eternal illusions ? But for it, should I have suspected 
a sorrowing soul in the depths of those limpid eyes? 
And, at this moment, should I be asking of my weak- 
ness the strength that constrains, of my doubts the 
faith that saves, of my pity the tenderness that con- 
soles and heals? 



I had moved to go, happy without knowing why; 
I hastened my steps. With my soul heavier and my 
feet lighter than before, I walked away, glorying 
in my meeting as in a victory over chance, over the 
thousand trifles, the thousand blind agencies that 
incessantly keep us from what we seek and from 
what unconsciously seeks us. 

I could have laughed for joy; and it would have 



^ 17 ^ 

been sweet to me, when I passed into the garden, to 
proclaim my glee aloud. But the peace of things laid 
silence upon me. I slowly followed the paths, bor- 
dered with marigolds and balsam, that lead to the 
house; and, when I passed under the blinds, which a 
friend's hand had gently drawn for me, I heard my 
everyday voice describing my discovery and my de- 
light in sober tones. 

And yet the moment of exaltation still charged my 
life; it seemed to me clearer and deeper; and I 
thought that enthusiasm is in us like a too-full cup, 
which overflows at the least movement of the soul. 



4 



I made enquiries that same evening; and all that 
I learnt encourages me. 

She lives at the end of our village of Sainte- 
Colombe. She was brought up at the convent in the 
town hard by and left it at the age of eighteen. Since 
then, she has not been happy. On Sunday she is 
never with the merrymaking crowd. She has never 
been seen at church. She neither prays nor dances. 



Chapter III 



I TOOK the road leading to the farm at which she 
lives. The yard is a large one, the trees that hem 
it in are old and planted close together. One can 
hardly see the straggling, thatched buildings from 
the road ; and I walked round the place without being 
able to satisfy my curiosity. She lives there, I was 
told, with an old woman, her godmother, about whom 
the people of the countryside tell stories of murder 
and debauchery. I have seen her sometimes. She 
gives a disagreeable impression. She is a tall, lean 
woman, with wisps of white hair straggling about 
her face. Her waving arms and twitching hands 
carry a perpetual vague menace. The black, deep- 
set eyes gleam evilly in her ivory face ; and her hard 
thin mouth, which opens straight across it, often 
hums coarse ditties in a cracked voice. 

Her curious attire completes the disorder of her 
appearance. Over her rough peasant's clothes, some 
article of cast-off apparel cuts a strange and lam- 



4* 19 *§* 

entable figure: a muslin morning-wrap, once white 
and covered with filmy lace; long, faded ribbons, 
which fasten a showy Watteau pleat to the back, 
with ravelled ends spreading over the thick red- 
cotton skirt; old pink-satin slippers, with pointed 
heels that sink into the mud. In point of fact, I 
could say the exact number of times when I have 
seen her and why I noticed her, for the sight of her 
always hurt me cruelly when I met her in the sweet 
stillness of the country lanes. 

For a long time, I wandered round the farm. I 
was moving away, picking flowers as I went, when 
suddenly, at a bend in the road, I saw the girl who 
filled my thoughts. She was sitting on a heap of 
stones ; and two large pails of milk stood beside her. 
Her attitude betokened great weariness ; and her 
drooping arms seemed to enjoy the rest. 

I lingered a little while in front of her. Her face 
appeared to me lovelier than on the first occasion, 
though her uncovered head allowed me to see her 
magnificent hair plastered down so as to leave it no 
freedom whatever. She answered my smile with a 
blush ; and, when I looked at her thick and awkward 
hands, she clasped and unclasped them with an em- 
barrassed air. 



«•§* 20 *§► 



Just now, at the wane of the day, I was singing 
in the drawing-room, with the windows open. I 
caught sight in the mirror of the sky ablaze with 
red and rose quickly from the piano to see the sun 
dip into the sea. . . . Near the garden, behind the 
hedge, I surprised the young girl trying to hide. . . . 



I had never seen her ; but now, because I saw her 
one day, I am always seeing her. 

Do we then behold only what we seek? It is a sad 
thought. We shall be called upon to die before we 
have seen everything, understood everything, loved 
and embraced everything. Our skirts will have 
brushed against joys which we shall not have felt; 
our streaming tresses will have passed through per- 
fumes which we shall not have breathed; our mouth 
will have kissed flowers which our hands have not 
known how to pick; and very often our eyes will 
have seen without acquainting our intelligence. We 
shall not have been observant continually. 

It is a pity that things possess no other life than 



«§* 21 + 

that which we bestow upon them. I dislike to find 
that, for me, everything is subject to my observa- 
tion and my knowledge. The first is great indeed, 
but the second is so small ! . . . 



A few years ago, the parish priest was on his way 
to the church at four o'clock one morning, to cele- 
brate the harvest mass, when he saw a strange thing 
floating on the surface of the pool that washes the 
steps of the wayside crucifix. As he approached, he 
perceived that it was a woman's long hair. A mo- 
ment later, they drew the body of a young and beau- 
tiful girl to the bank. With nothing on her but 
her night-dress, she seemed to have run straight from 
her bed to the pond. The gossips of the neighbour- 
hood will never cease chattering over this incident 
and the shock which it gave the priest; and, though 
there is no other pond in the village, the poor girl 
will be everlastingly reproached with choosing 
" God's Pool " for her attempt at suicide. 

Is it not enough for me to know that she is out 
of place amid her coarse surroundings and that she 
is not happy there? 



<§* 22 *§•> 



I have been expecting her for a week. I am wish- 
ing with all my might that she may come; I am 
drawing her with my eyes, with my smile, with my 
manner and with my will. But I say nothing to her. 
She must be able to take to herself all the credit 
of this first act of independence. Moreover, it will 
give me the evidence which I require of some sym- 
pathy between us. 

Outwardly, I am following a strict principle. 
Really, I am yielding to a fear: am I not about to 
perform a dangerous and rather mad action, in once 
more taking upon myself the responsibility of an- 
other's life? 

We are not always unaware of the follies which 
we are about to commit; but it is natural that the 
immediate joys should eclipse the probable misfor- 
tunes and help us to go boldly forward. 

Besides, the inquisitive know no weariness. They 
go with outstretched hand to the assistance of events, 
heedless of increasing the chances of suffering, be- 
cause they always find, in return, something to oc- 
cupy their restlessness. Let us not blame them. In 
contemplating the good or evil outcome of an action, 



<•§* 23 *§* 

we behold but its main lines ; we do not see the thou- 
sand little broken strokes that go to compose it. 
They make the total of our days; and they have 
to be lived. 



Chapter IV 



A BROAD avenue of beeches stretches in front of 
our garden ; and at the far end is the open country. 
Here we have placed a seat which looks out over 
space. Nothing but fields and fields, as far as the 
eye can reach; nothing but land and sky. We love 
the security of this elemental landscape, where the 
alternations of light succeed one another inexorably. 
The noontides are fierce and dazzling. The soft, 
opalescent mornings are fragrant with love and 
pleasure. But, most of all, the sunsets attract us 
by their unwearied variety, sometimes sober and 
tender, ever fainter and more ethereal, sometimes 
blood-red, monstrous and barbaric. 

The one which I watched to-day was pale and 
grey; and the obedient earth humbly espoused its 
gentle tones. With my hands clasped in my lap, 
it seemed to me that I was drinking in the peace 
that filled my heart; and my eyes, which uncon- 



<•§* 25 *§► 

sciously fastened on my hands, held for a moment 
my whole life enclosed there. 

Then I heard indistinctly steps approaching me. 
A woman sat down on the bench. The corner of her 
apron had brushed against my knees ; I raised my 
head and saw the young girl sitting by my side. 

She said, simply: 

" Here I am. 5 ' 

And at this short speech my mind is in a tumult; 
thoughts rush wildly through my brain without my 
being able to follow one of them. I press her hands, 
I look at her, I laugh, while little cries of delight 
burst from my lips: 

" You are here at last ! I was expecting you ! Do 
you know that you are very pretty . . . and that 
3 r ou look sweet and kind? . . . Make haste and tell 
me all about yourself. . . ." 

But she does not answer. She stares at me with 
wide-open eyes ; and my impulsive phrases strike with 
such force against her stupefaction that each one 
of them seems by degrees to fall back upon myself. 
I in my turn am left utterly dumf oundered : she is 
so ill at ease that I myself become nervous ; her as- 
tonishment embarrasses me; I secretly laugh at my 
own discomfiture ; and I end by asking, feebly : 



«§* 26 *§* 

"What's your name?" 

" Rose." 

" Rose . . . Roseline. . . . My name is . . ." 

And I burst out laughing. We were really talking 
like two children trying to make friends. I threw 
my arm round her waist and put my lips to her 
cheek. I loved its milky perfume. My kiss left a 
little white mark which the blood soon flushed again. 

She told me that she had seen me from a distance 
and that she had come running up without stopping. 
I was careful not to ask her what she wanted to tell 
me, for I knew that she had obeyed my wishes rather 
than her own ; and I led her towards the house : 

" Rose, my dear Rose. ... I know that you are 
unhappy." 

She stops, gives me a quick look and then turns 
red and lowers her eyes. Thereupon, so as not to 
startle her, I ask her about her work and about the 
farm. 

Rose answers shily, in short sentences, and we walk 
about in the garden. From time to time, she stops 
to pull up a weed; methodically, she breaks off the 
flowers hanging faded from their stalks; occasion- 
ally, she makes a reference, full of sound sense, to 
the care required by plants and vegetables. But my 



4* 27 *§* 

will passes like an obliterating line over all that we 
say, over all that we do ; and, while Rose anxiously 
tries to fill the silence, I lie in wait, ready for a 
word, a sigh, a look that will enable me to go 
straight to the heart of that soul, which I am eager 
to grasp even as we take in our hand a mysterious 
object of which we are trying to discover the 
secret. 

Alas, the darkness between us is too dense and 
there is only the light of her beautiful eyes, those 
sad, submissive eyes, to guide my pity ! Our conver- 
sation is somewhat laboured; the girl evades any 
direct question; and any opinion which I venture to 
form can be only of the vaguest. 

She seems to me to be lacking in spirit, of a nerv- 
ous and despondent temperament, but not unintel- 
ligent. I know nothing of her mental powers. We 
sometimes see an active intelligence directing very 
inferior abilities, just as our good friend the dog 
is an excellent shepherd to his silly, docile flock. In 
her, the most ordinary ideas are so logically dove- 
tailed that one is tempted to accept them even when 
one hesitates to approve them. Her mind must be 
free from baseness, for throughout our conversation 
she made no effort to please me. Would it not have 



<§* 28 *§* 

needed a very quick discernment, a very uncommon 
shrewdness to know so soon that she would please 
me better like that? 

That was what I said to myself by way of 
encouragement, so great was my haste to pour 
into her ears those instinctive words of hope 
and independence which it was natural to utter. 
And, let them be premature or tardy, barren 
or fruitful, I could not refrain from speaking 
them. . . . 

But suddenly she released herself: it was already 
past the time for milking the cows; they must be 
waiting for her. Nevertheless, she gave a shrug of 
the shoulders which implied that she cared little 
whether she was late or not ; and, with a " Good-bye 
till to-morrow ! " she went off heavily, making the 
ground ring with the steady tramp of her wooden 
shoes. 

For an instant I stood motionless in the orchard. 
Her shrill voice still sounded in my ears ; and the con- 
straint of her attitude oppressed me. The road by 
which she had just gone was now hardly visible. A 
fog rose from the sea and gradually blotted out 
everything. The plains, the hills, the cottages van- 
ished one by one; and already, around me, veils of 



<•§* 29 *§► 

mist clung to the branches of the apple-trees. At 
regular intervals, the boom of the fog-hom startled 
the silence. 



2 



Those who pass through our life and who will 
simply play a part there take shape in successive 
images. The first, a fair but illusive picture, fades 
away as another sadly obtrudes itself; and another, 
paler yet, comes in its turn ; and thus they all van- 
ish, becoming less and less distinct until the end, 
until the day when a last, vague outline is fixed in 
our memory. 

How different is the process in the case of those 
who are to remain in our existence and blend with 
it for all time ! It is then as though the living real- 
ity at the very cutset shattered the image formed by 
our admiration and triumphantly took its place. 
In point of fact, it vivifies it and, later, heightens 
it, colours it, ever enriching it with all the benefits 
which the daily round brings to healthy minds. 
Those beings will always remain with us, whatever 
happens ; they will be more present in their absence 
than things which are actually present ; and the taste, 



4* 30 *§•> 

the colour, the very life itself of our life will never 
reach us except through them. 

I thought of all this vaguely. There were two 
women before me: one, coarse and awkward, was ob- 
literating the other, so beautiful amid the ripe corn. 
Alas, should I ever see that other again? Was she 
not one of those images which fade out of our 
remembrance, becoming ever paler and more 
shadowy ? 

I felt a little discouraged. But perhaps the sad- 
ness of the hour was influencing me? My feminine 
nerves must be affected by this damp, warm mist. 
I went back to the house, doing my utmost simply 
to think that I was about to undertake a " rather 
difficult " task. 

Under the lamp, which the outside pall had caused 
to be lit earlier than usual, and in the brightness of 
the red-and-white dining-room, decked with gorgeous 
flowers, I discovered another side to my interview. 
While I was describing it laughingly, my disappoint- 
ment had seemed natural; and, my eagerness being 
now reinforced by pity, a new fervour inspired my 
curiosity. 

In sensitive and therefore anxious natures, the 
very excess of the sensation makes the impression 



received subject to violent reaction. It goes up and 
down, down and up ; and not until it slackens a 
little can reason intervene and bring it to its 
normal level. 



Chapter V 



I HAVE before me one of those little exercise- 
books whose covers are gay with pictures of soldiers 
or rural scenes. It is Rose's diary. I received it 
this morning, I have read it and it has left me both 
pleased and touched. 

It is a very simple and rather commonplace nar- 
rative, but one which, in my eyes, has the outstand- 
ing merit of sincerity. To me it represents the story 
of a real living creature, of a woman whom I saw 
yesterday, whom I shall see to-morrow and whose 
suffering is but a step removed from my happiness. 
The smallest details of that story have a familiar 
voice and aspect. . . . 

Poor girl! Would not one think that an evil 
genius had taken pleasure in playing with her des- 
tiny, like a child playing at ball? She was born of 
poor parents. Her father, a carpenter, was a drunk- 
ard and frequently out of work. He would often 
come home at night intoxicated, when he would beat 



^ 33 ^ 

his wife and threaten to kill her. Coarse scenes, vi- 
sions of murder, screams, oaths and suppressed weep- 
ing were the first images and the first sounds that 
stamped themselves on Rose's memory. One's heart 
bleeds to think of those child-souls which open in 
the same hour to the light of day and to horror, gain- 
ing their knowledge of life whilst trembling lest they 
should lose it. We see them caught in a hurricane 
of madness, like little leaves whirling in the storm; 
and to the end of their days they will shudder at 
the thought of it. 

She was left an orphan at the age of six. A 
neighbour offered to take her, a wealthy and devout 
old man, who sent her to the Nuns of the Visitation 
at the neighbouring town. 

Of those quiet, uneventful years in the convent 
there is nothing in particular to record. The child 
is perfectly happy, nor could she be otherwise, for 
she is naturally reasonable and she is in no danger 
of forgetting how kind fate has been to her. She 
pictures what she might have been, she sees what 
she is; and her soul is full of gladness. 

In January 18 — , Rose is seventeen. She is to 
pass her examinations the following summer. Her 
diary here gives evidence of a steadfast and whole- 



<•§* 34 *§► 

hearted optimism; she views the future with joyous 
eyes, or rather she does not see it at all, which is 
the surest way of smiling at it cheerfully. Her eyes 
are still the eyes of a child, to whom the convent- 
garden is a world and the present hour an eternity. 

Unfortunately, she had a rude awakening to life. 
The old man who had adopted her died after a few 
days' illness, without having time to make arrange- 
ments for her future. The good sisters at once wrote 
to her grandmother; and, the next day, Rose was 
packed off to Sainte-Colombe with a parcel of in- 
dulgences, a few sacred medals and a scapular round 
her neck. What more can a young life want to stay 
its uncertain steps? 



9, 



From that moment, I see her delicate profile stand 
out against a background of pain and sorrow, like 
a lovely cameo whose dainty workmanship has been 
obliterated by the hand of time. Moral suffering can 
refine and accentuate the character of a beautiful 
face, is indeed nearly always kind to it. But here 
the mental distress was only the feeble reflection of 
a crushing and deadening material torture. In the 



<•§* 35 *§* 

evenings, when the hour of rest came at last, Rose, 
exhausted, accepted it dully; her whole body called 
for oblivion ; her heavy eyelids drooped ; and her sub- 
merged wretchedness had no time for tears. 

How could the poor girl make any resistance? 
Her environment was too hostile, her disposition too 
gentle and the task laid upon her too oppressive. 

The very look of her diary, during those Sainte- 
Colombe days, tells us her story far better than the 
words which it contains. The first few pages are 
filled with wild and incoherent sentences. There are 
passages that can scarcely be deciphered and others 
blotted with tears. Her suffering is not sufficiently 
well-expressed for it to be understood and more or 
less identified, but it can be felt and divined: it is 
a landscape of pain, it is the sight of an inner life 
which has received a grievous wound and whose blood 
is gushing forth in torrents. 

And then hope is exhausted drop by drop; and 
with it go anger and resistance. Everything goes 
under, grows still and silent. For months, Rose 
hardly touches her diary: here and there, scattered 
on pages bearing no date, are occasional melancholy 
reflections, the last flickers of an expiring conscious- 
ness. . . . 



«§* 36 & 

It is then, no doubt, that one day she flies to death 
for deliverance. She is saved, but for a long time 
remains ill and weak. When she recovers her health, 
her spirit is finally broken. In silence and gloom, 
she drowns all feeling in work too heavy for her 
strength. 



3 



In the district they blame this young girl who, 
after receiving a good education, has acquiesced in 
this miserable existence. And yet I find a thousand 
reasons which explain her conduct and cannot find 
one for condemning it. Rose's soul is still in the 
chrysalis-stage. Ignorant of her own strength and 
qualities, how could she make use of them? 

Is not this the case with most young girls ? If pur 
moral transformations could bring about physical 
changes, if a woman, like a butterfly, had to pass 
through different phases before attaining her per- 
fect state, we should almost always see her stop 
at the first and die without even approaching the 
second. 

It is difficult enough for us merely to conceive that 
there are other roads to follow than that laid down 



4* 37 & 

for us by chance or by parents too often short- 
sighted ; and when we make the discovery, our first 
dreams of liberty appear so momentous and so dan- 
gerous ! Is it not just then that we need time to 
venture upon the most lawful actions, seeing that we 
have no sense of their real proportion? 

It is as though a wall separated the life that is 
forced upon us from the life which we do not know. 
Little by little, slowly, by instinct as much as by 
volition, we withdraw from the wall and it seems to 
become lower. The sky above us becomes vaster, 
the horizon is disclosed before our eyes and we at 
last distinguish what is happening on the other side. 
Ah, what sight would compare with that, if it broke 
suddenly upon our vision, if we could view life as 
we view the spreading country beneath us, when we 
stand on the summit of a tower ! All our senses, 
being equally affected, would impart to our will a 
motive force which is, on the contrary, dissipated by 
the tardiness of our feeble comprehension. 

Yes, an age comes when our vision is clear and 
true ; but often it is too late to find a way out of the 
circle in which we are imprisoned. That is the secret 
tragedy of many women's lives. 

What would one not give to tell them, those women 



«§* 38 *§•> 

who tremble and weep, to lift their minds high enough 
to see beyond their wretchedness ! Let them develop 
and strengthen themselves while still under the yoke, 
in order to throw it off one day like a gossamer gar- 
ment which one casts aside without giving it a 
thought! . . . 



Chapter VI 



I AM happy. Wonderful flowers lie at my feet, 
flowers which have been plucked and flung aside: I 
will pick them all up again, all of them ! I will gather 
them in my arms and steep myself in their scent! 
One by one, I will tend them till they lift their heads 
again, I will blend them cunningly ; and, when I have 
bound the fair sheaf, fate may do its worst! 

It is no longer a question of the sanity or insan- 
ity of my experiment, or my wisdom or unwisdom. 
There is a just action to be accomplished; and, this 
time, circumstances favour my plans. In her dis- 
tress, in her horror of her present life, all the pos- 
sibilities of deliverance might have offered themselves 
to the girl: she would not have seen them, she would 
even have fled from them instinctively, timid as an 
animal too long confined. To save her, therefore, 
chance must take to itself a substance and a name. 
Can I not be that chance? 

She suffers ; I will give her joy. She is tormented ; 



«|* 40 *§•> 

I will give her peace again. She knows not liberty ; 
through me she will know its rapture. Once already 
she has been snatched from death, but, on that day, 
while they were carrying Rose to the presbytery, her 
long, golden tresses wept along the wayside. But I 
will carry her where she pleases. She shall be free 
and happy ; and her hair shall laugh around her face. 
It shall help me to light her destiny, for beauty is 
a beacon for benighted hearts. Many will try to 
steer their course towards my Roseline. It will be 
easy for her to choose her happiness. 

True, I am aware how perilous and uncertain is 
my experiment. Will it be possible to efface the evil 
impress left on that mind and body? How much of 
her early grace, her early vigour shall we find? What 
will have become of all the forces that, at seventeen, 
should still be frail as promises, tender as the little 
green shoots of a first spring-day? 

But no matter? The impulse is irresistible and 
nothing can stay me now. Have no misgivings, 
Rose : hand in hand we will go through peril and sus- 
pense. Embrace the hope which I offer you: I will 
bring it to pass. Let nothing astonish you: all that 
is happening between us to-day is natural. You will 
go hence because it is right that you should go ; and 



<•§* 41 *§* 

you will go of your own free will. It is not so much 
my heart which will bring you comfort ; it is rather 
your heart which will open. I shall find in you all 
the good that you will receive from me. 



I send for the girl without further delay. A fort- 
night has elapsed since we first talked together ; and 
I am anxious to know the result. 

I look at her. A different woman is before my 
eyes. Is it a mistake? Is it an illusion? No, it is 
all quite simple ; and my words had no need to be 
forcible or brilliant. The word that shows a glimpse 
of hope to the sufferer has its own power. 

She says nothing and I dare not question her. The 
wisdom that has made her understand how serious the 
effect of my plans may be must also make her fear 
their possible flippancy. 

I have brought her into the dining-room. Sitting 
at the window, with her hands folded in her lap and 
her head bowed, she remains there without moving, 
heedless of the sun that is scorching her neck. Her 
wide-eyed gaze wanders over things which it does not 
take in; her lips, half-parted in a smile, betray the 



4* 42 ^ 

indecision of her soul. At last, blushing all over her 
face, she stammers out : 

" I am frightened. You have awakened my long- 
ings, my dreams. I am frightened. I would rather 
be as I was before I knew you, when I only wanted 
to die. When your message was brought to the 
farm, I swore that I would not come ; and yet . . . 
here I am ! " 

I put my arm round her neck : 

" It's too late," I whispered, kissing her. " To dis- 
cuss the idea of rebellion means to give way to it. 
Resist no longer, Roseline ; let yourself go." 

Her incredulous eyes remained fixed on mine ; and 
she said, slowly: 

" There is one thing that puzzles me. How am I 
to express it? I should like to know why you take 
so much interest in me: I am neither a friend nor a 
relation." And she added, with a knowing air, " You 
see, what you are doing doesn't seem quite natural ! " 

My heart shrank. So this peasant, this rough, 
simple girl knew the laws of the world! She knew 
that, even in the manner of doing good, there are 
customs to be followed, " conventions to be ob- 
served ! " Ah, poor Rose, though your instinctive 
reason is like a broad white fabric which circum- 



4* 43 *§> 

stances have not yet soiled, your character already 
has ugly streaks in it; the voice of the multitude 
spoke through your lovely mouth and, for a brief 
second, it became disfigured in my eyes ! Alas, if 
I wore a queer head-dress and a veil down my back 
and a chaplet hanging by my side and said to you, 
" My child, I wish to save your soul," would you not 
think my insistence quite simple and natural? 

Taking her poor, deformed hands in mine, I knelt 
down beside her: 

" Rose, the happiness which I find in helping you 
is a sufficient motive for me ; and I will offer you no 
others. ... I give you my confidence blindly, for 
one can do nothing without faith. I give you my 
confidence and I ask for yours. Will you vouchsafe 
it me?" 

The sun is streaming upon us ; our faces are close 
together ; my smile calls for hers ; my eyes gaze into 
hers ; and I repeat my prayer. 

Then she whispers, shily: 

" You see ... I have been deceived once ; per- 
haps you don't know . . ." 

I interrupted her : 

" I know that we must have been deceived twenty 
times before we learn to give our confidence blindly, 



«|* 44 *§► 

like a little child! ... I know that we must have 
been perpetually deceived before we understand that 
nothing proves anything; that everything is unfore- 
seen, inconsistent, and unexpected ; and that we must 
just simply ' believe,' because it is good to believe 
and because it is sweet to offer to others what we 
ourselves are unhappy enough to lack." 

She went on: 

" But what do you want me to do ? " 

" I want you to go away from here." 

"Why?" 

" Because you are wretched here." 

" Has any one said so? " 

"What does it matter what any one has said? 
I have only to look at you to see that you are 
not happy. Oh, please don't regard this as an act 
of charity, I would not even dare to talk about kind- 
ness ! The interest that impels me is one which you 
do not yet know; it looks to none for recompense; 
it is its own reward. It is the mere joy, the mere 
delight of knowledge. . . . Do you understand? " 

She shook her head ; and I began to laugh : 

" I suppose I really am a little obscure ! . . . But 
why do you force me to explain myself now? You 
will learn to understand me by degrees. ... I am 



& 45 *§► 

leading you towards a goal of which I am almost 
as ignorant as you are ; I am only the guide waving 
a hand towards the roads which he himself has taken 
and never knowing what the traveller will see or feel 
in the depths of his being." 

She was going to speak, but I placed my hand on 
her lips: 

" Hush ! I ask nothing more of you. I shall know 
how to win your confidence." 

I feel that she is silenced but not convinced. Hers 
is not a character to be thus persuaded : she will wait 
for deeds before judging the sincerity of words. I 
feel clearly that she is searching and judging me, 
while I myself am engaged in discovering her; and 
I shall have some curiosity in bending over the un- 
troubled waters of that soul in order to see my image 
there, as soon as there is sufficient light to reflect 
my image. 



Chapter VII 



ROSE is already almost happy. Hope is pene- 
trating her life; and the moments of rest filter into 
her days of wearisome toil like the cool water 
trickling through the rocks. 

As soon as she can get away on any excuse, she 
runs across to me. Flushed and laughing, she hurls 
herself into my arms with all the violence of a ca- 
tastrophe ; she crushes my cheek with a vehement kiss 
which waits for no response; and my hair catches 
in the rough hands squeezing my head. Smiling, I 
cannot help warding off the attack, while she pours 
out a torrent of incoherent words at the top of her 
voice. . . . 

During our early talks, I tried speaking very qui- 
etly, as a hint that she should do the same. She 
would shake the house with the thunder of her most 
intimate confidences, bellowed after the fashion of the 
peasants, who are accustomed to keep up a conversa- 
tion from one end of a field to the other. As I 



4* 47 *§* 

obtained no result, I had to speak to her about it; 
and, because I did so as delicately as possible, in 
order not to wound her feelings, she burst into a roar 
of laughter which showed me that her rustic life had 
robbed her of all sensitiveness. 

Being now authorised to admonish her at all 
times with regard to her gestures, her voice and her 
accent, I often make her repeat the same sentence; 
and, when I at last hear her natural voice, her origi- 
nal sweet and attractive voice, to which the music is 
beginning to return, shily and timidly, my heart 
overflows with joy. But, two minutes after, she is 
again bawling out her most trivial remarks, with a 
cheerful unconcern that disarms my wrath. Then I 
plead for silence as I would for mercy, draw her down 
upon my lap, take her head in my arms and nurse 
her as I would a child. 



2 



The stillness is so intense in the grove where we 
are sitting side by side, I am so anxious for her to 
feel it, that I become impatient and irritable. When 
I am with her, I am in a perpetual ferment. Her 
beauty and her coarseness hurt me, like two ill- 



«§* 48 *§► 

matched colours that attract and wound the eyes. 
I calm myself by scattering all my thoughts over 
her promiscuously; and, though most of them are 
carried away by the wind, I imagine that I am sprin- 
kling them on her life to make it blossom anew. 

" I am nursing you in my arms to wake you, my 
Roseline, just as one nurses children to put them to 
sleep. See what poor creatures we are! As a rule, 
it is the conventions and constraint of our upbring- 
ing, with all its artificiality and falsehood, that di- 
vide us. To-day, it is the opposite that rises between 
you and me and spoils our happiness ! I have often 
longed to meet a woman who was so simple as to be 
almost uncivilised ; and, now that you are here, I 
dread your gestures and your voice, which grate 
upon me and annoy me!" 

" But am I not simple? " Rose asks, ingenuously. 

" People generally confuse simplicity with igno- 
rance, too often also with silliness — which is not the 
case with you," I added, with a smile. " Real, that is 
to say, conscious simplicity is not even recognised; 
and, when it becomes active, it appears to vulgar 
minds a danger that must be averted. The better to 
attack it, they disfigure it. It is this proud and 
noble grace that I want you to acquire. Look, it 



«§* 49 *§* 

may be compared with this diamond which I wear on 
my finger. The stone is absolutely simple; and yet 
through how many hands has it passed before becom- 
ing so ! How many transformations has it under- 
gone ! How magnificent is its bare simplicity when 
set off by the plain gold ring ! It is the same with 
us. For simplicity to be beautiful in us, we must 
have cut and polished our soul and person many times 
over. Above all, we must have learnt the harmony 
of things and become fixed in that knowledge, like 
the stone which you see held in these gold claws." 
She asked, with an effort to modulate her voice : 
" Oughtn't I to take you for my model? " 
" No, Rose ! You frighten me when you say that ! 
You must not think of it. Listen to me: if ever we 
are permitted to imitate any one, it is only in the 
pains which she herself takes to improve herself. As 
for me, I wanted to achieve simplicity and I looked 
for it as one looks for a spot that is difficult to reach 
and easy to miss. For a long time, I wandered be- 
yond it. Rather than stoop to false customs, to lying 
conventions, I followed the strangest fancies. . . . 
Now it all makes me laugh." 
" Makes you laugh? " 
" Yes, past errors are dead branches that make 



& 50 *§* 

our present life burn more brightly. But, when I 
see how I judge my former selves, I become suspicious 
as to what I may soon think of my actual self; and 
therefore I do not wish you to take me as an ex- 
ample." 

Rose was still lying in my arms ; and her beautiful 
eyes were looking up at me. I raised her head in my 
hands and whispered, tenderly : 

" I feel that you understand me, that my words 
touch you, that you trust me and that you love me 
deep down in your heart; I feel that you also will 
soon be able to speak and unburden yourself freely, 
to be silent amid silence and peaceful amid the peace 
of things. . . ." 



The girl rose to her feet, with a glint of emotion 
animating her features ; and, as though to escape my 
eyes, she took a few steps in the garden. While she 
was hidden by the bend of the narrow path fenced 
by the tall sunflowers, my heart was filled with mis- 
giving: her step was so heavy, so clumsy! Would 
she ever be able to improve her walk? Judging by 
the ponderous rhythm of her hips, one would always 



4* 51 *§■> 

think that she was carrying invisible burdens at the 
end of each of her drooping arms. . . . 

But she soon returned; and her fair countenance 
was so adorable amid the golden glory of the great 
flowers that I could not suppress a cry of admiration. 
She came towards me smiling; ancl, to protect herself 
a little from the blinding sunlight, she was holding 
both hands over her head. Was it simply the curve 
of her raised arms that thus transfigured her whole 
bearing, that reduced the unwieldiness of her figure 
and made its lines freer? It was, no doubt; but it 
was also the soft breeze which now blew against her 
and accentuated the movement of her limbs by plas- 
tering her thin cotton skirt against them. And the 
heavy gait now seemed stately; and the excessive 
stride appeared virile and bold. I watched the hum- 
ble worker in the fields, the poor farm-girl; and I 
thought of the proud Victory whom my mind pic- 
tured enfolding all the beauties of the Louvre in her 
mighty wings ! 



Chapter VIII 



We were lying in the long grass, looking up at 
the sky through the branches of the apple-trees and 
watching the clouds drift past. 

The light was fading slowly, the leaves became 
dim, the birds stopped singing. 

" Rose, I do nothing but think of you. Who are 
you? What will become of you? I should like to 
anticipate everything, so as to save you every pain. 
Had you been happy and well-cared-for, I would 
have wished you trouble and grief. But, strength- 
ened as you now are by many trials, you will be 
able to find in sorrows avoided and only seen in the 
distance all the good which we usually draw from 
them by draining them to the dregs." 

" I am not afraid, I expect to be unhappy." 

" I hope that you will not be unhappy. The 
change will be quite simple if it is wisely brought 
about; you will drop out of your present life like 
a ripe fruit dropping from its stalk." 



& 53 & 

" How shall I prepare myself? " 

" So far, your chief merit has been patience. But 
now rouse yourself, look around you, judge, find 
out your good and bad qualities." 

Rose interrupted me: 

" My good qualities ! Have I any? " 

" Indeed you have : plenty of common sense, a 
great power of resistance, shrewdness. By means of 
these, you have been able to subdue the tyranny of 
others : can you not escape from that of your fail- 
ings? Your life has adapted itself to an evil and 
stupid environment; it must now adapt itself to the 
environment of your own self. 



From the neighbouring farms came the plaintive, 
monotonous cry calling the cattle home. The drowsy 
sky became one universal grey, while the night dews 
covered the earth with a faint haze. 

" I am surprised that, when you were so unhappy, 
solitude did not appear to you in the light of a 
beautiful dream." 

Rose's timid and astonished voice echoed my last 
words : 



«§* 54 *§> 

" A beautiful dream ! Then do you like solitude? " 

" Oh, Rose, I owe it the greatest, the only joys 
of my childhood i It was to gain solitude that, later, 
I set myself to win my independence, knowing that, 
if I did not meet with the love I wished, I should 
yet be happier alone than among others." 

" But, still, you do not live alone ! " 

I remained silent for a moment, stirred by that 
question which filled my mind with the thought of my 
own happiness; and then I said in a whisper, as 
though speaking to myself: 

" Rose, my present life is the most exquisite form 
of independence and solitude." 

And I went on : 

" Ah, Rose, to know how to be alone ! That is the 
finest conquest that a woman can make! You can- 
not imagine my rapture when I first found myself 
in a home of my own, surrounded by all the things 
purchased by my work. When I came in at the 
end of the day, my heart used to throb with glad- 
ness. No pleasure has ever seemed to equal that 
blessed harmony which reigned and reigns in my 
soul or that assured peace which no one can 
take from me, because it depends only on my 
mood." 



4* 55 *§* 

"Teach me that joy." 

" It is only a brighter light of our own conscious- 
ness, a more detached and loftier contemplation of 
what affects us, a truer way of seeing and under- 
standing. . . ." 

The girl murmured: 

"Shall I ever have it?" 

" Later, when you have gone away." 

And, in response to her anxious sigh, I went on, 
confidently : 

" And you will go away when you want to go 
as badly as I did, when your object is not so much 
to escape unhappiness as to secure happiness; for, 
when you become what I hope to see you, you will 
look at things so differently ! You will pity those 
about you, you will not judge them. The irksome 
duties laid upon you will not be a burden to you. 
You will understand the beauty of the country for 
the first time; and the thought of leaving it will 
reveal its sweetness to you. But, on the other hand, 
fortunately, new reasons for going will appeal to 
your conscience: first, your just pride in what you 
are and what you may become; the sense of your 
independence; and the vision of a wider and nobler 
existence. And, in this way, you will go not to 



«§* 56 *§► 

escape annoyance or to please me, but as a duty to- 
wards yourself." 



It was the silent hour when nature seems to be 
awaiting the darkness. Not a breath, not a sound, 
while the colours of the day vanish one by one be- 
fore the life of the evening has yet begun to throb. 

I turned to my companion. With a great la- 
bourer's knife in her hand, she was solemnly whit- 
tling a piece of wood. She answered my enquiring 
glance : 

" It is to fasten to Blossom's horns ; she's getting 
into bad ways. . . ." 

And, quickly, fearing lest she had hurt me, she 
added : 

" I was listening, you know ! " 



4 



Standing in the porch, we breathe the scent of 
the rose-trees laden with roses. It has been raining 
heavilj 7 . Tiny drops drip from leaf to leaf; the 
flowers, for a moment bowed down, raise their heads ; 



4* 57 *§* 

the birds resume their singing; and, in the sunbeams 
that now appear, slanting and a little treacherous, 
the pebbles on the path glitter like precious stones. 

We had taken shelter, during the storm, inside the 
house, where we sat eating sweets, laughing and talk- 
ing without restraint. But now Rose is uneasy; 
she looks at me and says, abruptly : 

" Do you love me? " 

" I cannot tell you yet." 

She insists, coaxingly : 

" Do tell me ! " 

" Darling, I have become very chary of words like 
that, for I know what pain we can give if, after our 
lips have uttered them, they are not borne out 
by all our later acts. As we grow in understanding, 
I believe that it becomes more difficult for us to dis- 
tinguish the exact value of the friendship which we 
bestow." 

"Why?" 

" For the very reason that we grow at the same 
time less capable of hatred, contempt and indiffer- 
ence. If a fellow-creature is natural, he interests us 
by the sole fact of the life which he represents ; and, 
if circumstances make us meet him often, it will be 
hard for us to be certain whether what we are actu- 



4* 58 *§► 

ally lavishing upon him is friendship or only in- 
terest." 

She seemed to like listening to me ; and I continued 
in the same strain: 

" A moment, therefore, comes when our under- 
standing is like a second heart, a heart that seems 
to anticipate and complete the other, by giving per- 
fect security to its movements. . . ." 

A breath of wind passed and stripped the petals 
from a rose that hung in the doorway. And our 
shoulders were covered with little scented wings. 



Chapter IX 



BESIDE the house, two old cypresses make great 
pools of shadow in the bright, green garden. Mo- 
tionless, they keep a pious and jealous watch over 
the stone fountain whose basin seems to round itself 
into an obliging mirror for their benefit. Here, 
amid the cool stillness, the running water murmurs 
its unceasing orison. 

I make Rose sit beside the fountain and slowly I 
begin unbinding her hair. 

Oh, the beauty of the honey-coloured waves that 
roll down her shoulders and frame her face in their 
sweetness ! Again and again I lifted and shook 
out those long-imprisoned tresses, giving them life 
and liberty at last. Rose, following the ancient fash- 
ion of our Norman peasant-women, does her hair into 
a mass of tight little plaits, twisted so cruelly as 
to forbid all freedom. 

The better to efface the impress of their tyrannical 



«i* 60 *§* 

past, I had to dip them into water. They opened 
out, like sea-weed. 

I had brought rich materials, jewels and flowers for 
Rose's adornment. All her beauty, so long hidden, 
was at last to stand revealed. I knew its potency, 
I divined its splendour; but her hair was too bar- 
barously done, her garments too coarse and rough 
for me to discover the character of her beauty or 
say what constituted its nobility. 

Rose, still smiling, held her head back patiently 
and, with closed eyes, gave herself over to my tender 
mercies. Then another picture, a similar picture, 
but tragic and now fading into dimness, rose in my 
mind ; and, almost in spite of myself, I said, softly : 

" Your long hair must have floated like this, I 
expect, on the day when you wished to die. And 
it must have been its splendour that would not suf- 
fer such a catastrophe. I wonder, dear, that you 
should have wished that, you who are so faint-hearted 
in the presence of life ! " 

Her forehead, bronzed by the summer suns, turned 
a warmer colour, like a ripe apricot; the veins on 
her temples swelled a little ; and she murmured : 

" I don't know. ... I don't know. . . ." 

I made fruitless efforts to find out the cause of 



4* 61 oi- 
lier embarrassment; her face clouded; and she said 
nothing more. Then, after doing up her hair, I be- 
gan to drape a material around her. I was thor- 
oughly enjoying myself. Rose noticed it and asked 
me why I was smiling. 

"Why?" I cried. "Why? Oh, of course, you 
are incapable at present of understanding the pleas- 
ure which I feel ! And how many are there who could 
distinguish its true quality ? People admire the new- 
blown flower, they are touched by a child's first smile, 
they travel day and night to stand on a mountain-top 
and see the dawn conquering the shadows of the 
earth ; and it is considered natural that, at such mo- 
ments, our feminine hearts, always ready to be 
poured out, should be filled with love and incense. 
But it is thought strange that one of us should 
recognise and greet the union of all the graces in the 
fairest of her sisters ! And yet one must be a woman 
to feel what I feel to-day, in unveiling and adorning 
your beauty. For it charms me without intoxicating 
me, sheds its radiance on me without dazzling me 
and makes my heart throb without causing my hands 
to tremble. . . . When the lover for the first time 
beholds the object of his love, longing clouds his eyes. 
Certainly, his sentiment is no less noble or less great, 



^ 62 ^ 

but it is of a very different nature! Other joys are 
mine, a thousand, new and glorious emotions, emo- 
tions of the heart and of the mind, the childish and 
girlish joys of dressing up, decorating and adorn- 
ing, of creating form and colour, in a word, beauty, 
the stuff of which happiness is made ! " 

Rose interrupted me: 

" Happiness? Do you think so?" 

" Yes, because beauty calls for love. Does not our 
happiness as women lie above everything in love? " 

Making one of those horrible movements with her 
feet, hands and shoulders of which I had done my 
best to correct her, Rose expressed her disgust with 
such violence as to undo the brooch with which I had 
just fastened the folds of a long white drapery to 
her shoulders: 

" Oh," she cried, " I hate love, I hate it!" 

Then she covered her face with her open hands; 
slowly the material slipped down to her waist; and 
her bust stood out against the dark trees, white and 
pure as that of a marble statue. 

The great calm that is born of beauty compelled 
me to silence. Rose remained without moving, un- 
troubled by the nudity which, at any other time, she 
would have refused to unveil. Did her emotion make 



4* 03 ^ 

her unconscious, or was it, on the contrary, lifting 
her to a plane in which false modesty had no place? 
Did she, in that brief minute, realise how our actions 
change their values in proportion to the fineness of 
our perception? . . . 

I threw my cloak round her and drew aside her 
hands: her face was wet with tears. I cross-exam- 
ined her: could she have suffered through love? 

"What is the matter, Roseline? Why are you so 
bitter against something you have never experi- 
enced? " 

She tried to smile through her tears and said, 
innocently : 

" It's nothing. ... It was like a shower : it's over 
now, quite over. . . . You are right, I really don't 
know why love fills me with such horror ! " 

And she came quietly and sat down again beside 
the fountain. 

2 

For the third time, I began to coil and uncoil her 
hair: 

" You see, I was wrong just now," I said, " when 
I uncovered your neck and crowned your forehead. 
This is what suits you: the severe Roman style! 



«§* 64 *§* 

And, though that loathing which you expressed 
just now seems to me unnatural, I feel almost 
tempted to excuse it in you, because it is so much 
in keeping with your impassive loveliness." 

Kneeling in front of her, I tried to make the 
folds of the material follow the natural curves of 
her body. Meanwhile, Rose seemed to be watching 
other reflections in the water than ours. Suddenly, 
she leant forward and put her beautiful bronzed 
arms round my neck; and I felt that she was will- 
ing me to look up. Then I raised my head and, 
when we were gazing into each other's eyes, she 
said, laying a sort of grave stress on every syllable : 

" Do you forgive everything, absolutely every- 
thing? " 

" To answer yes is not answering half enough," 
I said. And, kissing her, I added, " If you had to 
tell me of a serious fault, I should love to give proof 
of my indulgence; but are you not the best of 
girls?" 

I had an impression, for a second, that she was 
hesitating and that I was about to receive the sol- 
emn confession of a childish fault. But she at once 
replied, in a decisive little way : 

" I could not be as indulgent as you, really ! " 



4* 65 *§* 

" Because you are not so happy yet, my dearest. 
. . . Come, I have my own reasons for spoiling you 
and coaxing you and wanting you to be beautiful. 
I know what good fruits are born of those flowers 
of joy! . . . But I have finished my work. Get 
up, Rose, come with me! Come and see yourself a 
goddess ! " 

And I carried her off to the drawing-room. 

Straight and slender in the long white folds fall- 
ing to her feet, the girl stands before the mirror 
and stares with astonishment at her glorified image. 
Does she grasp the importance of this hour? Does 
she reflect that, at this minute, one of the great 
secrets of her destiny has been revealed to me by this 
woman's game which has given me a child's pleas- 
ure? Does she know that the moment is grave, un- 
matched and marvellous and that, by my friendly 
hands, chance is to-day showing her the power which 
she can wield and the realm over which she can 
rule ? 

Her everyday clothes are lying at her feet: the 
coarse chemise, the barbarous bodice, the hat trimmed 
with faded ribbons. Ah, Roseline, why cannot I as 
easily fling far from you all that imprisons your 
life and fetters your soul ! 



«§* 66 #> 

" You are beautiful ! " I say to her. " You are 
beautiful ! Do you know what that means ? Beauty 
is the source of happiness; and it is also the source 
of goodness, forgiveness and indulgence ! Your face, 
if you take pleasure in looking at it, will teach you 
much better than I can what you must be. It will 
make you kind and gentle and generous, if you have 
the wish to be in perfect harmony with it. Thanks 
to your beauty, my Rose, you will be able, if you 
have a true conception of its dignity, to achieve one 
perfect moment in your life ! " 

Alas, she does not share my enthusiasm! I take 
her hand, I lead her through the house, into all 
the rooms which she does not know. I keep on 
hoping that, in a new mirror, in a different light, 
she will at last catch sight of herself as she is and 
that she will weep for joy! . . . 

Meanwhile, she accompanies me, serene and smil- 
ing, pleased above all at my delight. In this way, 
we come to the last mirror ; and my hopes are frus- 
trated. But, in truth, I am too much" entranced with 
the vision which she offers to my eyes to grieve at 
anything; and soon I am very much inclined to 
think her admirable for not feeling what I should 
have felt in her place. After disappointing me, 



4* 67 *§> 

the very excess of her coldness captivates my inter- 
est ; and my enthusiasm does not permit me to seek 
commonplace or contemptible reasons for it. 

When admiration fills a woman's soul, it becomes 
nothing but an immense cup brimming with light, 
a flower penetrated by the noon-day sun until the 
heat makes its perfume overpowering. 



Chapter X 



THE shadows lengthen when the sun descends in 
the heavens ; and those which, in the broad light, en- 
hance the brilliancy of all things now overspread 
and gradually extinguish them. Thus do our anxie- 
ties increase when our joy lessens; and those which 
made us smile in the plenitude of our happiness be- 
fore long make us weep. . . . 

She has lied to me! I am sure now that she has 
lied ! What has she done ? What can she be hiding 
from me? I can imagine nothing that could kill 
the interest which I take in her, but she has lied! 
I was certain of it yesterday, after our talk, when 
I remembered her blushes and her embarrassment. 
I wanted to write to her then and could not. Dark- 
ness has fallen suddenly between her and me; and 
I no longer know to whom I am speaking; I no 
longer know what soul hears me nor at what heart 
I knocked! 



<•§* 69 *§* 

A friend's lie hurts us even more than it humili- 
ates us ; it tells us that we have not been understood 
and that we inspire distrust or fear. I remember 
saying to her, one day: 

" I would rather know that you hate me than ever 
feel that you fear me. You must hide nothing from 
me, unless you want to wound me deeply ; for the 
person to whom we feel obliged to lie is much more 
responsible for our lie than even we are." 

But how can I hope that every one of my words 
will be remembered and understood and turned to 
account! I enjoy talking into the soul of this great 
baby as one likes singing in an unfurnished house ; 
and I am none the less conscious of the illusion of 
it all. If we are to influence a fellow-creature, we 
do so best without aiming at it too carefully. Suc- 
cess comes with time, by intercourse and example. 



2 



We are now on the threshold of autumn and the 
days are already short. By seven o'clock, all the 
farms are sleeping. . . . 

When I left Rose yesterday, it was understood 
that she should sometimes come to see me in the 



^ 70 ^ 

evening, when her day's work has not been too hard. 
She is to come across the downs and tap at the shut- 
ters of the room where I sit every evening after 
dinner. 

To-day, I was hoping that she would not come 
and I gave a start of annoyance when I heard her 
whisper outside the window: 

" Mummy ! Mummy, dear ! " 

It is a name which she sometimes gives me in play. 
Women who have no children and do not expect ever 
to have any lend to all their emotions an extra ten- 
derness, an extra solicitude. It is that unemployed 
force in our hearts which is striving for union with 
others. 

Still, her affection displeased me this evening and, 
while I was putting on a wrap, my hands trembled 
with irritation. Rose, thinking that I had not heard 
her, raised her voice a little and repeated: 

" Mummy ! It's your little girl ! " 

I go out into the moonless, starless night, with 
my eyes still full of the light indoors ; and our hands 
meet blindly before exchanging a pressure. She 
says good-evening and I kiss her without answering. 
I am afraid of betraying my ill-humour ; I feel that 
I am hard and spiteful, but I hope that the mood 



4* 71 *sr 

will pass ; and my anger, because it remains unspoken, 
takes a form that favours forgiveness. If she con- 
fesses of her own accord, without being impelled to 
do so by my attitude, I know that my confidence in 
her will revive. 

We walk in silence through the sombre avenue. 
The night seems darker because no sound disturbs 
its stillness ; only the dead leaves, swept along by our 
skirts, drag along, utter a cry like rending silk. 

Rose sighed: 

" One would think the air was listening ! " 

I could not help exclaiming: 

" That's rather fine, what you said then ! " 

And silence closes in again around our two little 
lives, both doubtless stirred by one and the same 
thought. 

We go a little farther and sit down in the fields, 
where an unfinished haystack offers us a couch. We 
can hardly distinguish the line of the horizon be- 
tween the dark earth and the dark sky. A bat flits 
across our faces ; and Rose says, quietly : 

" It's flying low. That means fine weather to- 
morrow. I must get in the . . ." 

And suddenly her voice breaks and she covers her 
face with her hands. All is silent. . . . 



4* 72 *§> 

I feel myself brutally good. The certainty of the 
coming confession encourages me in my coldness 
and I remain mute, while my heart is beating with 
pity and excitement. . . . 

But she speaks at last and each note of that tear- 
filled voice, by turns faltering, violent and plaintive, 
brings before my eyes, staring into the darkness, 
every step of her soul's calvary. I listen in aston- 
ishment. And yet do we not know that every 
woman's existence has its secret? I see the long 
procession of those who have told me their story. 
The weakest of them had found strength to love; 
to yield to man's desire, the bravest had been cow- 
ardly, the truest had betrayed, the most loyal and 
upright had lied. Everywhen and everywhere the 
flame of life had found its way through rocks, thrust 
aside obstacles, subjugated wills. Even the woman 
whom nature had most jealously defended, the plain 
woman whom I saw imprisoned in a stunted shape 
and condemned to live behind an ugly mask, even she, 
when she told me her love-story, compelled me to 
believe that she had been the most beloved, perhaps, 
and her passion the most heroic. 

Rose, following the common law, had no strength 
to fulfil her own will, but all strength to obey an- 



4* 73 *§* 

other's. Soon after arriving at Sainte-Colombe, five 
years ago, she came to know a young man who had 
since left the district. One day, when they were alone 
in the farmhouse kitchen, he flung his arms around 
her and, without a word, overcame her feeble resist- 
ance. . . . 

I could not help interrupting her story : 

" Did you love him, Rose? " 

" No," she said, " I did not ! " 

"Then, why did you yield? . . . Why?" 

" I don't know," she sobbed. " He had such a 
strange, wild look, I was frightened. . . ." 

" But what did you do afterwards? " 

" He asked me to go and see him ; and I went 
whenever he asked me. . . ." 

" Then your godmother didn't know? " 

" She guessed it on the first day ; and, when I 
refused to take anything from him, she beat me 
and locked me up." 

"Well, what then?" 

" I managed to get out at night, by the roof. . . ." 

I would not let the subject drop: 

" Then you were very, very happy when you were 
with him?" 

But she exclaimed, artlessly: 



4* 74 *§> 

" Oh, not at all ! But he loved me, he said ; and I 
thought that he would always stay here, for my sake. 
. . . He went away soon, without letting me know. 
When I understood that he was not coming back, 
I loathed myself and him . . . and I tried to do 
away with myself. . . ." 

She burst into fresh sobs. 

I should have liked to rise and lead her away. I 
should have liked to say: 

" Come, cease these repinings ; let us walk across 
the silent fields and forget all this for ever! Every 
one feels love differently and looks at it in a differ- 
ent light. Come, waste no time in repentance and 
don't go on being angry with that man ! Faults that 
diminish our ignorance are not faults, but almost 
graces which chance bestows upon us. Come ! And 
break away from the bitterness that is spoiling your 
beauty ! " 

But, with a sigh, she leant her head on my shoul- 
der and I sat motionless and dumb : that little action 
on her part suddenly altered the whole course of 
my feelings. 

At moments of deep emotion, many different 
voices speak in our hearts. They seem to clash, to 
drown and contradict one another; but really they 



4* 75 *§* 

are hesitating and waiting. Even as human voices 
require the striking of a chord before harmonising, 
so do these inner voices wait for our unhappy friend 
to speak a word that shall unconsciously give the 
note of the thoughts that will comfort and soothe 
him. 

Rose whispered: 

" Oh, you do not speak ! Your silence frightens 
me!" 

" Don't be afraid of it, dearest. Silence nearly 
always means that the words which will follow will 
be just." And, summoning all my tenderness, I 
added, " You see, I am trying to bind all my most 
diverse thoughts together. I should like to hand 
them to you as I would a bunch of flowers, for you 
to choose the one that will restore your peace of 
mind. I am afraid of hurting you, I understand 
your wound so well." 

The girl presses against my breast ; and our kisses 
meet in a spontaneous outburst of affection. . . . 

Sadly I think of all those who are weeping, weep- 
ing over like sorrows. There are other wounded 
hearts bleeding in mine ; my memory echoes with 
the mournful prayers of the poor deluded victims of 
love. Alas, we are all subject to the cruel and ex- 



«§* 76 *§•> 

quisite law that absorbs the firmest wills in its in- 
different strength! 

I feel Roseline's hands quivering under my fingers, 
but I dare not speak. The silence of the fields and 
the solemn darkness awe me. Do not our least words 
seem to be written on the velvet of the night in 
precious and lasting letters ? . . . 



At last, I wiped away her tears and long and 
gently tried to rally her. But, suddenly drawing 
herself up, Rose cried: 

" I don't understand you, I no longer understand 
you ! What you are saying is just so much more 
silence and I wait for your judgment in vain ! You 
have, you must have, an opinion on what I have done. 
The reason why I hesitated so long to confess my 
fault was because I knew instinctively that you would 
blame me ; and now I feel you so far from me. . . . 
Please judge me, be angry with me: it will be easier 
for you to forgive me afterwards ! . . ." 

I do not know why this blind insistence offended 
me. Until then I had remained calm; but at her 
words there burst from the depths of my being the 



4* 77 *§* 

voice of instinct, that voice which I had tried to 
stifle, almost unconsciously, by force of habit and 
training. . . . Oh, that blatant, piercing voice! It 
seemed to me to rend the darkness, to scoff at my 
heart and my sweet reasonableness ! It was as 
though I saw all my kindly dreams of tolerance 
and indulgence fly into a thousand splinters ! Never 
had I so clearly realised their brittleness. My anger 
was all the greater because it was still trammelled by 
fragments of my reason. 

I placed my hands on her shoulders and shouted 
close to her face, which my eyes could not distin- 
guish: 

" Why, why will you rouse my instinct, my nerves, 
all those things which should never interfere in our 
judgments and beyond which we should try to look 
if we would understand the actions of others? You 
give the name of silence to the words spoken by my 
reason and you wish to be judged by a blind and 
senseless power ! But that idiot power mercilessly 
condemns all the faults committed in its name ! That 
power, which is making me tremble now with ex- 
citement, will tell you that you could have done no- 
thing worse ! Do you understand? Nothing, nothing! 
And it will overwhelm you with reproaches. For it 



«S» 78 *§•> 

is not your action that revolts me ; it is your apathy, 
your flabbiness, your cowardice! . . . You gave 
yourself without knowing why! You did not sur- 
render for the sake of the joy that makes us fairer 
and better! You did not surrender because love 
had taken your heart by storm ! You did not sacri- 
fice yourself to an idea: had it been vile and base, 
I could still have accepted it! No, you gave your- 
self without knowing why! You obeyed the will of 
the first-comer, as the silliest and most docile of 
wives obeys the recognised canons and conventions 
. . . without knowing why! . . . Ah, Rose, Rose! 
I wanted to help you to become strong and free. 
What a character, what a disposition you bring me ! 
And yet I did not ask so much ! I wanted your na- 
ture to have strength and flexibility, so that my 
hands might have taken it and moulded it. I looked 
forward to shaping it and giving it nobility and 
refinement. ..." 

Tears choked my words. At that moment, the dis- 
appointment appeared to me complete and irrepa- 
rable. Still, so as not to sadden her unduly, I 
murmured : 

" Do not misunderstand me, my poor Rose ; I am 
not saying that you soiled yourself by yielding to 



4* 79 *§* 

that man. I should not care much if you had ; for, 
if the fairest forms could take birth from the mud 
in the gutter, you would see me plunge my hands in 
it without reluctance. No, what distresses me is 
your weakness ; and I have simply likened your 
nature to a substance without consistency and im- 
possible to mould." 

Rose moaned and sobbed : 

" To please you, I will brave everything. . . . 
Don't forsake me ! ... Go on loving me ! . . ." 

I divined rather than saw the body lying prone, 
with her head on the ground; and the paler shadow 
of her hair reminded me of the dear beauty of her. 
I grew calmer. The comfort of having said all 
that I had to say relieved my heart and sent rip- 
pling through my veins, like a cool stream, a more 
natural indulgence than that which had animated me 
at first. Bending over Rose, I reflected that reason 
weighs heavily on a woman's breast and that it is 
well to thrust it aside occasionally. I tried to re- 
assure her between my kisses : 

" I am wrong to be so irritable and despondent ; 
forgive me ! I believe that your nature will never 
be vivid or strong ; but your newly-developed con- 
science will save you from fresh weaknesses. Be- 



<§* 80 *§► 

sides, in some direction we shall find what you are 
capable of. Destiny asks little of us when we have 
little to give it; and events pass us by of their own 
accord. Your life can be gentle and passive and 
still be useful and good. It is my own fault if I 
am disappointed : I am always more or less of a child ; 
and I become passionately enthusiastic on the 
strength of a smile, or a pure outline, or a beautiful 
profile. I ought not to have looked in you for what 
existed only in my imagination. . . ." 

" Then you are no longer angry with me ? " 

"Why should I be?" 

I kissed her tenderly. Poor child, so she had suf- 
fered through love ! I pitied her ; and yet the hap- 
piness of knowing her a little better swallowed up 
my pity. Things move quickly in those who, not 
believing in heaven, seek upon earth the beginning 
and the end of life and all that comes between. 
And they come to prefer to the highest joys those 
which foster a clearer vision and a truer compre- 
hension. 

And, trying to explain myself, I added : 

" One would think that a time comes when we 
judge like a traveller looking out from the top of 
a tower. All the differences melt into unity before 



4* 81 *§* 

his eyes. He turns slowly and sees, on the one side, 
the forest; on the other, the sea; at his feet, the 
noisy town, the world; a little farther, the calm and 
peace of the fields ; and, overhead, the infinite indif- 
ference of the skies. And, like him, we are engrossed 
in what we discover and we no longer see the tower 
by which we climbed nor feel that on which our feet 
stand; and we are nothing, nothing but a thinking 
light that settles upon some life." 



We lay stretched in the clover that was still warm 
from the heat of the day ; and our arms were locked 
and our hair intertwined. My cheek cooled hers, 
which her tears had set on fire ; and the sombre peace 
of the sky sank into us. We were both filled with 
the peculiar happiness that comes after a painful 
confession, a happiness whose source is a sense of 
security, a joy that seems yearning to cover us with 
its wings for one halcyon hour. 

" Rose, darling, never forget the feeling of relief 
which you have now. That sense of security is in- 
finitely precious. Let its fragrance remain with you 
for ever. May it become impossible for you to do 



«•§* 82 *§•> 

without it. Seek it, insist upon it silently, even 
from the strangers whom you may meet. Falsehood 
destroys the perfume and the bloom of women: it 
makes them colourless and uniformly commonplace. 
Always have the courage to be true. A sort of 
secret combat is waged between any two persons who 
meet for the first time. Remember that, as a woman, 
you have always the choice of weapons; and choose 
them frankly. In so doing, you will gain courage 
and assurance and the great strength that springs 
from harmony, from the perfect accord of our body, 
our mind and our speech. I do not say that you 
will necessarily conquer with that weapon, but I do 
say that, even if defeated, you will, contrary to the 
general rule, feel mightier and more exultant than 
before!" 

A star appeared, a quiver ran through the trees 
near by and passed over all the earth. The night was 
rising. 

I was at my ease beside my companion ; our hearts 
were again at one. That love-incident, however lack- 
ing in love, had brought her nearer to me. 

" I do not know which path you will choose, my 
Rose; but we all have two roads by which to reach 
the goal for which we are making : to be or to seem. 



«§* 83 *§» 

The real lovers of life will always choose the first. 
They will arrive later; perhaps they will never ar- 
rive. But, after all, what does arriving mean? " 

Rose at once retorted: 

" Still, why have a goal, if not to reach it? " 

The girl's practical logic amused me; and our 
laughter rang out in unison across the fields. 

" Rose, morally speaking, the goal is really the 
means which we employ to attain it. It is a light 
which we voluntarily flash in front of our footsteps. 
We can neither miss it nor reach it, because it moves 
with us. It becomes greater or smaller or is re- 
newed, according to the evolution of our strength 
and our life. . . ." 

We had risen from the ground and, as we talked, 
were slowly following the path that skirts the 
orchard. Rose asked: 

" Cannot you more or less describe your goal, the 
one you are speaking about? " 

I hesitated for a moment and, almost involuntarily, 
murmured : 

" To know a little more ... to see a little farther 
... to understand a little better. . . ." 

Rose repeated, slowly and earnestly: 

" To know a little more ... to see a little . . ." 



«S* 84 *§» 

But I laughingly stopped her, for the words 
sounded too serious in our young souls. 

The orchard-gate closed between us. I was walk- 
ing away, when Rose called to me: 

" Come and kiss me again. . . ." 

I ran back to her. She leant over the hedge and 
I could only just distinguish her face. Then our 
lips met of themselves, like flowers that touch. 

For a long time, in the still air, I heard her heavy 
footfall. 



Chapter XI 



NEXT day, Rose was with me early in the 
morning: 

" I could not sleep," she said. " I wanted to speak 
to you without tears or blushes. If I have done 
wrong, I have atoned for it; and it is done with. 
All that remained of it was a sad memory; and, 
now that I have considered it with you, even that 
is gone." 

I look at her. Her appearance pleases me. Her 
step is firm, her cheeks are pale, her eyes burning; 
she is living more ardently than usual. She con- 
tinues, with animation: 

" You said to me once that people who believe 
in another life seem to sweep their sins and their 
remorse up to the doors of eternity. For us, you 
said, who have not that illusion, everything is dif- 
ferent: we do not put off paying the bill for our 
sins. We can recognise their consequences ; and that 



«§* 86 *§► 

is our expiation. And you added, proudly, " It is 
cowardly to look to another for it, even if that other 
were God ! " 

We are walking in the orchard. The long grass 
is bending under the weight of the dew, which has 
decked it with a thousand glittering jewels. As we 
pass by a tree laden with apples, Rose pulls a branch 
to her and, without plucking the fruit, bites into 
it. I watch the lips part and the white teeth meet 
and disappear in the juicy pulp. For a second, the 
soft red mouth rounds over the fruit, which seems 
to match its beauty and to be questioning Rose about 
her pitiful love-affairs. 

" Then, Rose dear, you were not really happy 
for a moment with your lover? " 

" No." 

" But he was young, I suppose, and more or less 
good-looking? " 

She thinks for a moment and then bends her head. 

" You remember it, Rose ? " 

The girl appears astonished and answers, hesi- 
tatingly: 

" It is five years ago, I don't remember now. . . ." 

I was surprised in my turn and looked at her. 
What I She didn't remember! She had forgotten 



4* 87 *§* 

that ! Her lips had not retained the impress of the 
first kiss ! 

My eyes closed and from the background of my 
life a bygone moment rose, one of those memories 
that linger in the hearts of women with such fidelity 
and vividness that they lack not a scent, a sound, 
a line, a word, a look, a gesture ! 

I was twelve years old and he fifteen. It was at 
the seaside. Our parents were talking a few steps 
away, but night was falling and a fisherman's hut 
hid us from their eyes. He bent over to me and our 
lips met in a simple kiss, simple as a flower with 
petals still unopened, for we were both of us 
innocent. . . . 

I can still see the colour and the shape of the drift- 
ing clouds. I can smell the mingled breath of the 
sea and of his boyish mouth. I can remember how 
I felt as a frightened, trembling and enraptured 
little girl. ... A sailor was singing some way off; 
and the gulls that circled between sea and sky seemed 
to be keeping the last rays of daylight upon their 
white wings. 

Why, I know that boy's mouth by heart and shall 
always know it ! We often kissed again, without even 
dreaming that, at this game as at all games, there 



«§* 88 *§> 

might be room for progress ! . . . And then . . . 
and then . . . that's all I remember of him. . . . 
The next is another memory, at another place and 
another age. . . . And then another again. . . . 



Would one not think that, in the more or less 
happy lives of us women, in our more or less easily 
traversed roads, the sensations of love are so many 
illuminated floral arches that mark the different 
stages of our accomplishment? We go up to them, 
we pass through them with hopes, smiles or sighs. 
But, whatever they may be, we come out of them 
fairer and better. What should we be without that, 
without love? The love which is rebuked, which we 
are supposed to hide and blush for! The love that 
entreats both our strength and our weakness, our 
patience and our fervour, our passion and our rea- 
son ! The love that sets in motion our highest facul- 
ties and our lowest instincts, that makes each of us 
know her own power and her own poverty by the part 
which she allows it to play in her life ! 

In that moment, I saw and lived my joys in the 
kisses of childhood and girlhood. I travelled my 



«•§* 89 *§* 

road again; and the arches of light seemed higher 
to me and they followed hard on one another, be- 
coming ever more radiant and decked with gayer 
flowers, until this very hour when the desired happi- 
ness has been found, established and kept fast. . . . 



My thoughts return to Rose, who has sat down 
under a tree; and I stretch myself beside her. 

A herd of cows suddenly enters the orchard. 
White and brown, they plunge among the apple- 
trees; driven by a child, who is taking them down 
to the long grass, they amble heavily along in meek- 
eyed resignation. A smell of cow-shed at once 
reaches our nostrils; and, in the silence, we hear 
a noise of busy munching. . . . 

" Darling, you, who have always lived in the midst 
of nature, should have sounder and more accurate 
ideas on love than those of other women, while mine 
are a little warped by my over-cultivated nerves and 
feelings. If, for instance, you had said to me, yes- 
terday, ' I gave myself because it was natural,' you 
would have dominated my poor reason from the pin- 
nacle of an essential truth." 



^ 90 ^ 

Without quite understanding what I say, Rose 
smiles in answer to my smile and we remain silent; 
our eyes gaze without seeing and our idle hands trail 
in the wet grass. We hear, without listening, the 
hoarse, fat, cooing-voluptuous voices of the doves: 
in the cool air of the morning, among the leaves, 
the flowers and the branches, it is an undercurrent 
of joy rising and falling, suspended for a moment 
and then beginning again, in unwearying repe- 
tition. 

Rose murmurs: 

" Why are you always saying that I cannot make 
progress without love? It makes me unhappy when 
you say that. I should have liked to have nothing 
in the world but your affection. You kissed me so 
tenderly last night, over the hedge." 

" It is not the same thing, Rose darling. Cer- 
tainly, there is nothing more harmonious and purer 
than the kiss that joins the lips of two friends like 
ourselves. But it is not the same thing as the 
kiss of love, for the value of that lies not only in 
what it is, but in what it promises ; and it is a 
delight that sometimes echoes through our whole 
lives. . . . You will have to love before you under- 
stand." 



4* 91 *§* 

The girl folded her arms around my waist as 
though to bind herself to me : 

" But how would you have me love any one but 
yourself? " she asked. " Have you not given me 
happiness? When I am with you, I seem to be 
living in a fairy-tale." 

Despite the pleasure which her words gave me, I 
made an effort to combat them. 

The character of a woman who tries to be just is 
full of these little contradictions. In proportion 
as her heart is satisfied, she finds her intellect be- 
coming clearer and stronger ; and what calls for her 
judgment rarely leaves her heart unmoved. If Rose 
had not protested, I should still have spoken, from 
a sense of duty, but my words would have been with- 
out warmth or conviction. Now it seemed to me 
that her charming compliment gave added force to 
what I was about to utter in the interest of an- 
other's happiness. 

She leant her face against my breast and my fin- 
gers played with her sunny hair, her unbound hair, 
which was now waving joyously, crowning her with 
a shimmer of amber and gold. 

" No," I replied, " you must fall in love in order 
to develop and expand. Our women's lives are like 



<§* 92 *§► 

summer days : wisdom tells us to follow their evolu- 
tion. After the morning's waiting, we want the 
noon-day splendour and rapture. As you never had 
that rapture, you have not yet known love: and, 
at your age, is not that an absurd and miserable 
ignorance? Is it not right to wish for love and 
even to force its coming? Those who go on waiting 
for it in meek resignation appear to me so guilty! 
. . . Life has always seemed to me to be divided 
into two parts: the search for love; and love. As 
long as we are not in love, let us continue the search 
for it ; let us seek stubbornly, madly, cruelly, if need 
be; let us be untiring and unrelenting. There are 
no obstacles for the woman with a resolute will. Let 
each of us follow that quest in her own manner, 
according to her strength, her means and her cour- 
age, through every danger and every pain. When 
we have at last found love, or rather our love, let 
us go towards it without fear, without false modesty ; 
and, if we are loved, let us not wait to be entreated 
for what we can offer generously. Let us never 
be pilfered of that which it is our privilege to 
give ! " 

A tendril drops from the creeper above us and 
caresses our faces. . . . 



«§* 93 *§* 

How delightful life is at this moment! The air 
is filled with rejoicing, with the murmur of an infi- 
nite happiness ! A tremulous haze hovers over the 
fields, the insatiate doves reiterate their glad re- 
frain. Around us, here and there, a slender blade 
of grass shakes beneath the light weight of a but- 
terfly. But is not everything lovely in the eyes of 
a woman who is talking of love? It is as though 
happiness were the harbinger of her glance, flying 
ahead and settling upon things. 

Rose, all attention and curiosity, now questioned 
me: 

" But you, what did you do? " 

" In my case," I said, " when I knew that he loved 
me too, I went to his country to find him. I can 
still see us walking in a meadow all bright with flow- 
ers. On the horizon, the blue sky met the sea; and, 
behind us, the red roofs, the church-steeples and 
the tiny white houses of a Dutch village slowly van- 
ished from sight. He gave me his arm; and it was 
a joy to me to let him feel the gladness in my heart 
by the motion of my hip, on which he leant slightly. 
Then he said, ' You walk like a queen for whom her 
subjects wait.' And I knew from his words that he 
was still waiting for me, though I was by his side, 



«§* 94 *§> 

and they suddenly told me what a blissful kingdom I 
had to offer him ! " 

" Did you seek long before that day came? " 

" No, once I was free, I found happiness after a 
few months of trouble and difficulty; but you see, 
dear, I would have gone to the other end of the world 
to meet my love! I had no need to journey so far; 
and this makes me inclined to think that, in our 
search, we need to be attentive even more than 
active ! " 

Roseline murmured, pensively: 

" The men say that a certain amount of pre- 
liminary experience in love is indispensable ... to 
them." 

My whole soul revolted. Releasing myself from 
the girl's embrace, I sprang to my feet and faced 
her: 

" But, Rose, isn't it the same with us ? And is it 
right to expect that a woman should rivet her whole 
existence to the first smile, to the first look, the first 
word that moves her? Sensible people tell us that 
marriage is a lottery! By what aberration of the 
intellect do they come to admit that a being's whole 
life should be voluntarily subjected to chance? Not 
one of us would consent to such a degradation, if 



<•§* 95 *§* 

women in general were not absolutely ignorant! 
And that is why many, too clear-sighted to submit 
to a ridiculous law and lacking the courage to in- 
fringe it, die without having known the flavour and 
the goodness of life. Oh, what injustice! Is youth 
not short enough as it is? Is the circle in which our 
poor intelligence moves not sufficiently limited? And 
is it necessary, in addition, to chain us to phantom 
principles, which falsify nature, disfigure goodness 
and vilify the miracle of the kiss and the innocence of 
the flesh?" 

I was standing against a tree, a few steps away 
from Rose; and my hand plucked nervously at the 
leaves within my reach. The blue sky seemed hypo- 
critical to my eyes, the beauty of the flowers crafty 
and mocking. I continued, in a tone of convic- 
tion: 

" It is right that woman should make her own 
experiments, it is right that she should know men 
to judge which of them harmonises with her. . . . 
It is by constantly encountering alien souls that 
she will form an idea of what her twin soul should 
be. Yes, I know that a natural law rejects this mo- 
rality; and that is why I do not think the woman 
should give herself until she is quite certain of her 



<§* 96 *§> 

choice. It is true that her experiments will be in- 
complete ; the senses will have played but a small part 
in them, or none at all; but must we not accommo- 
date ourselves to the inevitable? In any case, that 
woman will indeed be enlightened who, regardless 
of public opinion, lives freely in the man's company, 
studying him, observing him and sometimes even lov- 
ing him ! " 

Rose listened to me without a word or a move- 
ment; only, every now and then, her long, dark 
lashes, tipped with gold, would flicker for a moment 
and then droop discreetly on her cool, fresh cheeks. 
But the thought of her own frailty suggested an 
objection; and she asked: 

" Don't you think that what you propose is diffi- 
cult for the woman? " 

" Oh, yes, difficult and, to many of us, impossi- 
ble ! Through a want of pride, through love or pity, 
they resign themselves to an act of which their rea- 
son does not approve and they wake up unhappy, 
sometimes for ever. ... It is difficult, for the 
woman who resists appears to the man a sort of 
monster, abominable and detestable. Ah, there must 
be no desertion before possession ! Because we have 
given him our lips, we must make him a present of 



<•§* 97 *§* 

our lives ! Because we have consented to certain 
pleasures, we must, so that he may enjoy a greater, 
sacrifice our future to him ! ... In fact, he goes 
farther and says that woman, when she indulges in 
those experiments, is following the dictates of a 
loathsome and mean self-interest. Self-interest, when 
this conduct entails endless dangers and bitter- 
ness ! Self-interest, when it demands of us, before all, 
an absolute contempt of a world to which nearly 
all are slaves, when it exposes us to insults and suf- 
fering and increases the number of our enemies and 
multiplies the obstacles in our path ! . . . No, that 
woman is not selfish who, in all good faith, plunges 
boldly into the adventure at the risk of ruining 
herself, comes near to a man, thinking that she has 
found what she is seeking and hoping that love may 
result. She feels the promptings of her senses and 
does not resist her heart, but her reason is awake ! 
She will not give herself unless everything that she 
learns confirms her expectations ; she will give 
herself if she really believes that the happiness of 
both depends upon it; and the combat that is waged 
enables her to judge clearly of the quality of their 
love. She is judge and combatant in one. She 
lets herself be carried along so that she may have 



<§* 98 *§* 

fuller knowledge; and it is not without pain, it is 
not without love that, at the eleventh hour, she will, 
if need be, refuse herself." 

Rose here interrupted me: 

" If she loves, if she suffers, why does she refuse 
herself?" 

" There are a thousand degrees in love ; and a 
woman of feeling always suffers when she inflicts 
suffering." 

I examined my mind for a moment and, as though 
it were uttering its thoughts backwards, 1 continued, 
slowly : 

" It is sometimes our duty to inflict suffering. 
The man's instinct is always more or less blinded 
by desire ; he always, either craftily or brutally, pro- 
poses. It is for us to dispose. We are all-powerful. 
Peace or discord springs from our will. He is not 
as well fitted to choose as we are, because he has 
not the same reasons for wishing to see comradeship 
follow upon passion, to see rapture give way to se- 
curity. If we are one day to be the mother of the 
child, are we not first of all the mother of love ? Are 
we not at the same time the cradle and the taber- 
nacle of that god? In any happy couple, is love 
not cast in the woman's image much more than in 



4* 99 *§* 

the man's? The man has a thousand things that 
attract and retain him elsewhere; his temperament 
is more prodigal and less considerate than ours. It 
is in the woman that love dwells; her sensitive na- 
ture leads her to a higher knowledge in the art of 
loving; and the infinite details of her tenderness can 
make her seem perfect in her lover's eyes when they 
do not render her exclusive. . . ." 

Struck by this last word, Rose exclaimed: 

" What ! According to you, love should not be 
exclusive ! " And, lowering her voice, she asked, 
" Are you not faithful? " 

" We do not even think of being faithful as long 
as we love. We should blush to offer love the cold 
homage of fidelity: it is a word devoid of meaning 
in the presence of a genuine love. In love fidelity 
is like a chain disappearing under the flowers. If 
it is one day seen, that means that the flowers are 
faded." 

I kneel beside her and, taking her in my arms, 
kiss her fondly. Through the exquisite silence of 
the day, the church-bell rings out the Angelus in 
notes of gold. The garden is flooded with sun- 
shine; and the marigolds, the phlox, the jasmines, 
the scabious and the mallows push their heads above 



«§* 100 *§* 

their white railing. Each eager heart turns towards 
the light. 

"You see, my Roseline: just as the great sun 
shines in his glory and governs the realm of flowers, 
so love must be king in the lives of us women ! He 
reigns and is independent of any but himself. Only," 
I added, laughing, " though we accept him as king, 
we must not make a tyrant of him. Poor love! I 
wonder what wretched transformation he must have 
undergone through the ages for us to have managed 
to invest him with the most selfish of human senti- 
ments, the sense of property! So far from that, 
we ought mutually to respect the life that goes with 
ours and never seek to restrain it." 

There is a pause ; and Rose, with her face pressed 
to my cheek, almost whispers : 

"You are not jealous? " 

I felt myself flushing and would have liked not 
to answer. But, alas, would she not by degrees have 
discovered all the pettiness that is ill-concealed under 
my thin veneer of self-control and determination? I 
tried to reveal it all in one sentence : 

" Know this, Rose, that it is in myself and in 
myself alone that I study the women that I would 
not be!" 



«§* 101 ^ 



I watch my great girl while she talks. This rus- 
tic beauty, in her cotton bodice, her blue print skirt 
and her wooden shoes, no longer shouts. She ex- 
presses herself better and does not gesticulate so 
violently. She is quieter in her movements and her 
shyness is not unattractive. Rays of light filter 
through the branches and cast shifting patches of 
light on her face and figure. I always love to ob- 
serve the details of her beauty, but to-day my heart 
contracts for a moment as my eyes follow the curve 
of her chin, which is charming, but devoid of all 
firmness, and her whole profile, which is beautiful, 
but lacking in decision. . . . 

Will Rose be one of those who accomplish them- 
selves by means of love, who exalt themselves by ex- 
alting it, who master and improve themselves the 
better to control it? 

Love is the great test by which our values are 
reckoned and weighed. The fond vagaries of the 
body have taught the proud soul its limits; and rea- 
son has wilted under a kiss like a flower under the 
scorching sun. Every woman has known the ex- 
quisite luxury of forgetting herself, of losing her- 



«§* 102 *§♦ 

self so utterly that no other thing at the moment 
appears to her worth living for. She has heard 
the voice of the charmer exhorting her to abandon 
pride, ambition, her own personality, to become, 
in short, no more than an atom of happiness under 
a dark and splendid sky which each moment of fe- 
licity seems to adorn with a new star. 

Where the weak woman goes under, her stronger 
sister is never lost. The lower she may have fallen, 
the higher she raises herself. She returns from each 
of her strayings more fit for life. She is more re- 
sisting, for she has known how to sway and bend 
without breaking; more indulgent, because she has 
seen herself encompassed with weakness and beset 
with longings. She knows how frail is the spring 
that regulates her strength, but also how necessary 
that strength is to her happiness. She has come 
to understand what real love means, that the union 
of man and woman approaches the nearer to per- 
fection the less the two wills are fused. She has 
understood, above all, that, to contain, glorify 
and keep love, we need all the energy of our 
respective personalities and all the benefit of our 
dissimilarity ! 

Rose was silent. 



«§* 103 *i> 

I lay on the grass, with my arms outstretched 
and my eyes fixed on the sky; and the breeze sent 
my hair playing over my lips. For a long while aft- 
erwards, my thoughts continued to wander amid the 
fairest things in the world. 



Chapter XII 



It is typical autumn weather, a dull, dark day 
which seems never to have fully dawned. Beneath 
the burden of the weary, oppressive clouds, the grass 
is greener and the roads more distinct. The light 
seems to rise to the sky instead of falling from it. 

I have been in the kitchen-garden for an hour. 
There all the plants are beaten down by the wind 
and the rain; the asparagus-fronds lie across the 
paths like tangled hair ; but the broad-bottomed cab- 
bages are a joy to the eye, with their air of com- 
fortable middle-class prosperity. Looking at their 
closely enfolded hearts, I seemed to recover the illu- 
sion of my childhood, of the days when my eyes pic- 
tured mystery in their depths. . . . 

How amazed we are when one of our senses hap- 
pens to receive a sudden impression, in the same 
way as when we were children ! We behold the same 
object simultaneously in the present and the past; 
and between those two points, identical and yet dif- 



4* 105 *§* 

ferent to our eyes, our memory tries to stretch a 
thread that can help it to follow the thousand and 
one intermediate transformations which have led us 
from the false to the true, from the wonderful to 
the simple, from dreams to reality. We should, no 
doubt, discover here, in the subtle history of our 
sensations and the different ways in which we re- 
ceived them, the gradual forming of our character, 
the pathetic progress of our little knowledge, all 
the frail elements of our personal life; in a word, 
the plastic substance of our joys and sorrows. . . . 

I think of the little girl that I was, but between 
her and me there stands . a long array of children, 
girls and women. And I can do nothing but in- 
wardly repeat: 

" How soon we lose our traces ! . . ." 
I smile at the memory of myself as we smile at 
the unknown child that brushes against us in pass- 
ing; and I leave myself to return to Rose. . . . 



She is a never-failing source of satisfaction to me. 
My dreams glory in having discovered so much hidden 
virtue here, at my door; and I am surprised at the 
new pleasures which I am constantly finding in her. 



«§* 106 *§► 

In certain natures predisposed to happiness, such 
happy surprises are prolonged and constantly re- 
newed; and this may be one of the innocent secrets 
of the intellect. Are there not a thousand ways 
of interpreting a feeling, even as there are a thou- 
sand ways of considering an object? Our mind ob- 
serves it daily under a different aspect, turns and 
turns it again, sees it from above and below, sees 
it near and from afar and loves to show it off and 
place it in the most favourable light. The mind of 
every woman, especially of a woman with an artistic 
bias, is not without a secret harmony of colour, line 
and proportion. Something intentional even enters 
into it; and the caprices of her soul are often but 
an outcome of her desire to please. Her natural 
instinct, which is always inclined to give form to 
the most subtle of her sensations, enables her to 
find in goodness the same clinging grace which she 
loves in her clothes. She likes her happiness to be 
obvious and highly coloured, that it may rejoice 
the eyes of those around her; and, so as not to 
sadden their eyes, she paints the bitterness of her 
heart in neutral shades of drab and grey. By think- 
ing herself better, she appears prettier in her own 
sight ; and it seems to her, as she consults her mirror, 



4* 107 *§* 

that she is replying to her own destiny. The soft 
waves of her hair teach her how frail is her will 
by the side of her life. She learns to bestow her 
own reward on the sympathy of her heart by crown- 
ing her forehead with her two bare arms ; and, when 
she sees the long folds of her dress winding around 
her body, she recognises the sinuous, slow, but de- 
termined bent of her feminine power. 

I remember once being present at a meeting be- 
tween two women who gave me a charming proof of 
our natural inclination to lend shape and substance 
to our thoughts and feelings. They were of dif- 
ferent nationalities and neither of them could speak 
the other's language. Both were of a warm and 
sensitive nature, endowed with an analytical and 
artistic temperament; and, as soon as they came 
together amidst the boredom of a fashionable crowd, 
they sat down in a corner and, with the aid of a 
few ordinary words, of facial expression, of vocal in- 
tonation, but above all by means of gesticulation, 
they succeeded, in a few moments, in explaining 
themselves and knowing each other better than many 
do after months of intercourse. 

I was interested in this strange conversation, this 
dialogue without a sentence, but so vivid and ex- 



<§* 108 *§► 

pressive, in the same breath childish and profound; 
for they wished to show each other the inmost re- 
cesses of their souls and they had nothing to do it 
with but two or three elementary words. How pretty 
they were, the fair one dressed in red and the other, 
who was dark, all in white, with camellias in the dusk 
of her hair. They were not at all afraid of being 
frivolous and would linger now and then to examine 
the filmy muslins and laces in which they were ar- 
rayed. 

The elder had already chosen her path, the 
younger was still seeking hers ; but the characters 
of both were alike matured and their minds com- 
pletely formed. Both of them in love and happy in 
their love, they tried above all to express their tastes 
and ideas. 

To understand each other, they employed a thou- 
sand ingenious means. Their mobile faces eagerly 
questioned each other with the unconscious boldness 
of children who meet for the first time. They took 
each other's hands, looked at each other, read each 
other's features. At times, they would make use of 
things around them : a light here, a shadow there, peo- 
ple, objects. Once I saw the fair-haired one take up a 
Galle cup that stood near. For a minute, she held 



«§* 109 *§* 

her white arm up to the light ; and tlirough her fin- 
gers the lovely thing seemed like a flash of crystal- 
lised mist in which precious stones were shedding 
their last lustre. 

I forget the various images, childish and subtle, 
by which she was able to show her friend all her 
sensitive soul in that fragile cup. A little later, 
there was some music ; and the dark one sang while 
the fair one accompanied her on the piano. Through 
the sounds and harmonies I heard the perfect con- 
cord of those two lives, which had known nothing 
of each other an hour or two before. . . . 

It was an exquisite lesson for me, a wonderful 
proof that women's souls are able to love and unite 
more easily than men's, if they wish. And I once 
again regretted the unhappy distrust that severs 
and disunites us, whereas all our weaknesses inter- 
woven might be garlands of strength and love crown- 
ing the life of men. 



3 



By a natural trend of thought, Rose appeared to 
me contrasted with those two rare creatures. . . . 
Rose is not sensitive and is not artistic. No doubt, 



«§* no ^ 

when she left school, she could play the piano cor- 
rectly and likewise draw those still-life studies and 
little landscapes by means of which the principles 
of art and beauty are carefully instilled into the 
young mind. But she did not suspect that there 
could be anything else. She saw nothing beyond the 
ruined mill which she drew religiously in charcoal; 
twenty times over, she set an orange, a ball of 
worsted and a pair of scissors together on the win- 
dow-sill without seeing any of the wonders which 
the garden offered her. 

Later, when every Sunday she played The Young 
Savoyard's Prayer on the organ, her placid soul con- 
ceived no other harmonies. She never felt, within 
the convent-walls, that divine curiosity, that blessed 
insubordination of the artist-child which obtains its 
first understanding of beauty from its hatred of 
the ugliness around it and which turns towards pretty 
things as flowers and plants turn towards the light. 

Ah, my poor Rose, how I should like to see you 
more eager and alive 1 In the close attention which 
you give me, in the absolute faith which you place 
in me, my least words are invested with a precision 
of meaning that invites me to go on speaking; but 
how weary I am at heart! Oh, let us pass on to 



<•§* 111 *§* 

other things : it is high time ! Let us not sink into 
slumber and call it prudence: up to now I have been 
content to see you sitting patiently at my feet; 
but I no longer want you there. Enough of this ! 
I dream of roaming with you at random in the open 
fields, I dream of making you laugh and cry, of 
feeling your young soul fresh and sensitive as your 
cheeks. I dream of stirring your heart and rousing 
your imagination. We will go far across the coun- 
try-side; together we shall see the light wane and 
the darkness begin ; and, since you love me, you must 
needs admire with me the rare beauty of all these 
things ! . . . 



Chapter XIII 



ROSE was to have a holiday the next day. We 
arranged that she should come with the trap from 
the farm, the first thing in the morning, to fetch me. 

We start at six o'clock. The harness-bells tinkle 
gaily to the heavy trot of the big horse; and we 
laugh as we are jolted violently one against the 
other. We drive through the villages, those happy 
Normandy villages where everything seems eloquent 
of the richness of the soil. They are still asleep, the 
white curtains are drawn and the geraniums on the 
window-ledges alone are awake in all their glowing 
bloom. A faint haze veils the fields and imparts to 
things a soft warmth of tone that makes them more 
soothing to the eyes. The sun rises and we see 
the breath of earth shimmer in its first rays. 

We have never yet been for a whole day's outing 
together; everything is new in my new pleasure. I 
look at Rose beside me. I had wanted her to put 



4* 113 *§* 

on her peasant clothes ; and I find her beautiful in 
her scanty garb in the cool morning air. 

We follow the long hog's-back that commands a 
view of the whole country round. Here and there, 
tiny villages float like islands of green amid the wide 
plains. A row of poplars lines the way on either 
side. Their yellow leaves quiver and rustle in the 
breeze. The rooks stand out harshly against the 
white road. And the mist, which is beginning to 
lift in places, reveals a deep-blue sky. 

The keen air that enters my throat and makes my 
mouth cold as ice tells me of the smile that flickers 
over my face ; and my pleasure is heightened by the 
sight of my happiness. A woman sees herself anew 
in everything that she beholds ; life is her perpetual 
looking-glass. In our memory, the flowers in a hat 
often mingle with those along the road ; and some- 
times the muslin of a dress enfolds the recollection 
of our gravest emotions. 

O femininity, sublime and ridiculous, wise and 
foolish! Never shall I weary of surprising its move- 
ments and variations deep down in my being ! How 
it fascinates me in all its shades and forms ! I let 
it play with my destiny as much from reason as from 
love, for we know that nothing can subdue it. I 



worship it in myself, I worship it in all of us! It 
may exhaust us in the performance of superhuman 
tasks, it may let us merely dally with the delight 
of being beautiful, it may chain us to our bodies or 
deliver us from their tyranny, it may adorn life or 
give it, enrich it or kill it: always and everywhere 
it arouses my eager interest. Ever unexpected and 
changeful, it floats in front of our woman's souls 
like a gracious veil that draws, unites and yet sepa- 
rates. . . . 

The even motion of the trap lulls my dreams and 
we drive on, in the midst of the plains, the fields 
and the woods. We pass through a dense flock of 
sheep. The warm round backs, the gentle, anxious 
faces push and hustle, while the thousand slender 
legs mingle and raise clouds of dust along the road- 
side. The timid voices bleat through space; and 
a pungent scent fills our nostrils. We are now go- 
ing down into the valley. The village appears, 
among the trees: a cluster of red and grey roofs; 
little narrow gardens; white clothes hung out and 
fluttering in the sunlight. Beyond are broad mead- 
ows dotted with peaceful cows and streaked with 
running brooks. There, just in the middle, a factory 
displays its grimy buildings. It is an eye-sore, but 



<•§* 115 *§* 

it leaves the mind unscathed. Does it not represent 
definite and deliberate activity amid the unconscious- 
ness of nature? . . . 

At this moment, Rose turns towards me; and I 
seem to read a sadness in her eyes : 

" What are you thinking of? " I ask. 

" I am thinking that I should like to go away 
altogether and that we have to be back to- 
night." 

I kissed her and laughed. 

" My darling, you must live and be happy in the 
present : there is plenty of room there." 

We arrived at the country-house to which I was 
taking her. Pretty women in delicate morning- 
wraps were eagerly awaiting us on the steps, while 
some of the men, attracted by the sound of our 
wheels, leant out from a window to see my pretty 
Rose. There was a general cry of admiration: 

" Why, she's magnificent ! " 

We stepped out of the trap and I pushed Rose to- 
wards the party, with whispered words of encourage- 
ment; but, suddenly bending forward, with her feet 
wide apart, her arms swinging and her cheeks on 
fire, she dips here and there in a series of awkward 
bows. . . . 



«§* 1.16 *§► 

They were kind enough not to laugh; and I led 
the girl through the great, cool echoing rooms, mul- 
tiplied by the mirrors and filled with marvels. . . . 



The sun streams through the immense, "wide-open 
windows ; and the harmony of the ancient park min- 
gles with that of the silk hangings and the old fur- 
niture. The fallen leaves sprinkle tears of gold 
upon the deep green of the lawns. The soft-flowing 
river welcomes with a quiver the perfect beauty of 
the skies; rare shrubs and delicate flowers set here 
and there sheaves and garlands of joy; and the 
golden sand of the paths accentuates the variety 
of the colours. On the hill opposite, a wood gilded 
by the autumn seems to be lying down like some 
huge animal; in the distance, the tree-tops are so 
close together that one could imagine a giant hand 
stroking its tawny fur. On either side of the tall 
bow-windows, the scarlet satin of the curtains falls 
in long, straight folds. 

Let us be in a palace or a hovel, in a museum or 
an hotel: is not our attention always first claimed 
by the window? However little it reveals, that little 



4* 117 *§* 

still means light and life, amid our admiration of 
the rare or our indifference to the ordinary. The 
windows represent all the independence, hope and 
strength of the little souls behind them; and I be- 
lieve that I love them chiefly because they were the 
confidants and friends of my early years, when, as 
an idle, questioning little girl, I would stand with 
my hands clasped in front of me and my forehead 
glued to the panes. My childhood spent at those 
windows was a picture of patient waiting. 

Often they come back to me, the windows of 
that big house in a provincial town, on one side 
lighted up and beautiful with the beauty of the gay 
garden on which their lace-veiled casements opened, 
on the other a little dark and lone, as though lis- 
tening to the voice and the dreary illusion of the 
church which they enframe. . . . 



3 



The current of my life, diverted for a moment, re- 
turned to the present and, as always, it swelled with 
the gladness that rises to our hearts whenever chance 
conjures up a past whose chains we have shattered. 

Happier and lighter at heart, I continued with 



4* 118 *§► 

Rose my visit to the galleries, the gardens and the 
hot-houses. The luncheon passed off well. Rose was 
quite at ease and suggested in that elegant setting 
a stage shepherdess, whose beauty transfigured the 
simplest clothes. A silk kerchief with a bright pat- 
tern of flowers is folded loosely round her neck; her 
chemisette and skirt are freshly washed and ironed, 
her hands well tended and her hair gracefully knot- 
ted. She introduces a striking and very charming 
note into the Empire dining-room. More than once, 
during lunch, I congratulated myself on not having 
yielded to the temptation to adorn her with the thou- 
sand absurd and cunning trifles that constitute our 
modern dress, for her little blunders of speech and 
movement found an excuse in her peasant's costume. 
Nevertheless, she answered intelligently the questions 
put to her on the treatment of cattle and the culti- 
vation of the soil; and I had every reason to be 
proud of her. Her grave and reserved air charmed 
everybody. If she often grieves and disappoints me, 
is this not due more particularly to the absence of 
certain qualities which her beauty had wrongly led 
me to expect? 



4* 119 *§* 



Before taking our seats in the trap, we go for a 
stroll through the village. As we pass in front of the 
baker's, a splendid young fellow, naked to the waist, 
comes out of the house and stands in the doorway. 
The flour with which his arms and his bronzed chest 
are sprinkled softens their modelling very prettily. 
His sturdy neck, on which his head, the head of a 
young Roman, looks almost small, his straight nose, 
long eyes and narrow temples form a combination 
rarely seen in our district. I was pointing him out 
to Rose, when he called to her familiarly and con- 
gratulated her on visiting at the great house. I 
saw no movement of foolish vanity in her; on the 
contrary, there was great simplicity in her story of 
the drive and the lunch. I was pleased at this and 
told her so, later, when we were back in the trap. 

" The poor fellow is afraid of anything that 
might take me from him," she said. " He must be 
very unhappy just now, for he has been imploring 
me for the last two years to marry him." 

I gave her a questioning look ; and she went on : 

" I did not want to. I would rather end my days 
in poverty than languish for ever behind a counter. 



4* 120 *§* 

Still, his love would perhaps have overcome my re- 
sistance, if I had not met you." 

She leant over to kiss me. I returned her caress, 
though I felt a little troubled, as I always do when 
I receive a positive proof of the way in which 
I have changed the course of her life. At the same 
time, I realised that her nature contained a sense 
of pride, in which till then I had believed her en- 
tirely deficient. I remained thoughtful, but not as- 
tonished. We end by having opinions, on both men 
and things, which are so delicately jointed that they 
can constantly twist and turn without ever breaking. 

Meanwhile, the horse was jogging peacefully 
along; we were going towards the sea, for I wanted 
to finish our holiday there. The willow-edged river 
followed our road; and we already saw the white 
sheen of the cliffs at the far end of the valley. 

Soon we are passing through the little old town, 
where a few visitors are still staying for the bathing, 
though it is late in the season. At the inn, where we 
leave our horse and trap, they seem to think us a 
rather odd couple. I laugh at their amused faces, 
but Rose is embarrassed and hurries me away. All 
the dark and winding little streets lead to the sea. 
We divine its vastness and immensity beyond the 



4* 121 *§* 

dusky lanes that give glimpses of it. In front of 
one of those luminous chinks, under a rounded arch- 
way, an old woman stands motionless ; she is clad 
like the women of the Pays de Caux: a black dress 
gathered in thick pleats around the waist, a brown 
apron and a smooth, white cap flattened down over 
her forehead. Poor shrivelled life, whose features 
seem to have been harshly carved out of wood ! She 
is like an interlude in the perfect harmony of things. 
I utter my admiration aloud, so that my Roseline's 
eyes may share it ; and we pass under the archway. 

We are now on the beach; the wind lashes our 
skirts and batters my large hat, which flaps around 
my face. For a more intimate enjoyment of the 
sea, we run to it through the glorious, exhilarating 
air which takes away our breath. Over yonder, a 
few people are gathered round a hideous building all 
decked out with bunting. It is the casino. We 
hasten in the opposite direction. On the patch of 
sand which the sea uncovers at low tide, some boys 
disturb the solitude; but they are attractive in their 
fresh and nervous grace, with their slender legs, their 
energetic gestures and their as it were beardless 
voices. Their frolics stand out against the pale 
horizon like positive words in a blissful silence. 



«§* 122 *§•» 

As we sat down on the shingle, the sun facing us 
was still blinding ; and I reflected that, when my eyes 
could endure its brilliancy, it would be like our hu- 
man happiness, very near its end. . . . 

The excitement of the lunch at the big house has 
not yet passed off; and Rose laughs and is amused 
at everything. Has she to-day at last, by the con- 
tact of those happy, care-free lives, foreseen an ap- 
proaching deliverance from hers? Of all the things 
that we have seen together, how much has she really 
observed? Has the test to which I tried to submit 
her to-day proved vain? As a guide to her im- 
pressions, I traced the outline of my own before 
her eyes. I questioned her. Then it seemed to me 
that, in bending my thoughts upon Rose, I saw her 
as we see our image in the water, with vaguer hues 
and less decided lines. The girl merely, from 
time to time, added a word expressing her content- 
ment, a thought of her own; and to me it was as 
though a little sunbeam had played straight on the 
water and the image through the leafy branches. . . . 

Does this mean that we see here a mere reflection, 
an utterly hollow soul, into which the leavings of 
other souls enter naturally? If it seems to me, at 
this moment, to borrow light and blood from me, 



<•§* 123 *§► 

is that a reason for thinking that it possesses 
neither sap nor sunshine? No, a thousand times no! 
True, I am the mother of her real life and she must, 
so to speak, pass through my soul before reaching 
hers. But, though we are of one mind, we are two 
distinct natures, two very different characters. It 
is a question not only of one creature attaching her- 
self to another, but of an awakening and self -enquir- 
ing spirit, of a late and sudden development. Rose 
does not wish to copy me. Honestly and diligently, 
she spells and lisps to me something like a new lan- 
guage, with the aid of which she will soon be able 
in her turn to express herself and to feel. There 
are moments when she seems to understand me per- 
fectly, even to my inmost thoughts ; and I sometimes 
say to her: 

" Where was she in the old days, the girl who un- 
derstands me so well now? What did she do ? Where 
did she live? . . ." 

But where are all of us before the hour that re- 
veals us to ourselves? And what manner of being 
would he be who had never undergone any influence 
or contact, who had never seen anything, felt any- 
thing? All impressions, whether of persons or 
things, come to us from without, but little by little 



and so imperceptibly that there is never a day in 
our lives that may be called the day of awakening. 
And yet it exists for all of us, shredded into decisive 
and fugitive minutes throughout our lives. Imagine 
for an instant that we could gather them, put them 
together and place them all in the hands of one 
being who, with one movement, would scatter them 
all around us. Would not the change in our char- 
acter, in our thoughts, in our feelings be very re- 
markable ? Would we not appear actually " pos- 
sessed " by that person, who, after all, would have 
been but the instrument of a natural reaction of all 
our inert forces? 

Filled with these thoughts, I said to Roseline: 

" Dearest, once your life is kindled into feeling 
and expression, I can no longer distinguish it, for it 
is absorbed in mine. ... I shall soon be going away ; 
and all that I shall know of you will be your beauty, 
your unhappiness and the tenderness of your heart." 

Her great, innocent eyes, lifted to mine, asked: 

" Is not that enough? " 

And, almost ashamed of my doubts, I at once 
added : 

" You shall come where I am ; whatever happens, 
be sure that I will not desert you." 



«§t 125 *§* 

With an abrupt gesture, she flung her arms around 
me; and, as we looked into each other's eyes, the 
same mist rose before them. Was she at last about 
to accompany me into the depths of my soul? 

My heart burns with the fire of this new and 
longed-for emotion; and I feel two crystal tears, 
two tears of sheer delight, slowly follow the curve 
of my cheeks. Rose's own sensibilities have been 
blunted for a time by her rough life; she does not 
yet know how to weep for happiness; and, almost 
frightened, she convulsively presses her clasped 
hands against her breast, as though she feared lest 
it should burst with the throbbing of her joy. 

I placed my lips to the long golden lashes, I ga- 
thered the dear, timorous tears that seemed still un- 
certain which path to take ; and, behind the veil of my 
kisses, they gushed forth without fear or shame. 



The setting sun was no more than a thin crimson 
streak on the dividing line of sky and sea; and the 
peaceful billows whispered mysteriously in the dusk 
that rose from every side. 

It was time to go. When we were both standing, 



4* 126 al- 
so frail and insignificant on the great empty beach, 
a wave of passionate gratitude overwhelmed both our 
hearts ; and I at last believed that all nature — the sea, 
the meadows and the fields — had wrought its work 
of love and beauty in my Rose. 



Chapter XIV 



IMMENSE black clouds scudded past in the dark- 
ness ; a furious wind stripped the groaning branches 
of their leaves ; and, when the moon suddenly pierced 
the night, gaunt figures appeared of almost bare 
trees twisted and shaken by the wind. Behind the 
orchards, a few cottage-windows showed a glimmer 
of light; and the watch-dogs howled as I passed, to 
the accompaniment of their dragging chains. 

I walked quickly, full of misgivings and yet un- 
daunted. I asked myself at intervals what was tak- 
ing me to the farm, to probable suffering. Was 
it Rose's silence: I had heard nothing of her for 
a week? Was it the hope of saying good-bye to 
her, of letting her know at least that I was to go 
away the next day? Or was it not rather the curi- 
osity that makes us wish to see, without being seen 
ourselves, the man or woman who interests us? 

We always influence in some way or other the 
looks or the words that are addressed to us. The 



«§* 128 *§► 

eye that rests on us becomes unconsciously filled with 
our own rest; and the longing that awakens at the 
sight of us is often born of the unspoken call of our 
soul or our blood. From the first moment when our 
hands meet, an exchange takes place, and we are 
no longer entirely ourselves, we exist in relation to 
the persons and the things around us. Two honest 
lives cannot join in falsehood; but either of them, if 
united to a vulgar nature, is perhaps capable of 
deterioration. 

While thus arguing, I seek to reassure myself. 
True, Rose could never be at the farm, among those 
coarse people, what she is with me. Still, what will 
she be like? 

I remember something she said to me at the begin- 
ning of our acquaintance : 

" For the sake of peace with those about me, by 
degrees I made myself the same as they were: After 
a time, I never said what I really thought and soon 
I ceased to notice the difference between the two. As 
I thought that it was impossible for me ever to go 
away, it seemed to me a wise policy to adapt my- 
self to the life I had to live. It was a lie at first; 
later it became second nature. . . ." 

But now? Now that all that existence is no more 



4» 129 *§* 

than a temporary unpleasantness, what is her 
attitude ? 



2 



It was striking eight when I came up to the farm. 
As a rule, everybody is in bed by then. But to-day 
was the feast of the patron-saint of the village ; and 
there must have been dancing and drinking till night- 
fall. At that moment, the darkness was so thick 
that I could hardly see anything in front of me. I 
found the gate locked. Clinging to the trees and 
pulling myself through the thorns and brambles, I 
climbed across the bank and dropped into the 
orchard. I at once called softly to the dog, so that 
he should recognise a friend's voice, and, as soon 
as I was certain of his silence, I walked quietly to 
the house, where there was a light in two of the wind- 
ows at the back of the farm-yard. Not daring to 
take the path that led to the door, I made my way 
as best I could through the long grass. I was shiver- 
ing in my dress ; and my feet were frozen. Whenever 
the moon peeped through two clouds, I quickly flung 
myself against a tree and waited without moving for 
the darkness to return. Cows were lying here and 



«|* 130 *§► 

there on the grass : at each lull in the storm, I heard 
the heavy breathing of the sleeping animals; and 
their peacefulness soothed my troubled mind. 

Some thirty yards from the house, I stopped, un- 
certain what to do. It can be approached only by 
going a little higher, for it is built on a mound in 
the centre of the yard. The whole length of the one- 
storeyed, thatched buildings was without a tree or 
any dark corner where I could shelter. 

I was still hesitating, when suddenly a shadow 
passed across one of the windows. I seemed to rec- 
ognise Rose, and my rising curiosity made me cover 
in a moment the distance that separated me from 
her. Once there, against the window-pane, I thought 
of nothing else. 

No, it was not fear but sorrow that oppressed me 
from the first glance within: Rose was laughing at 
the top of her voice, her mouth opened in a paroxysm 
of mirth. She was laughing a silly, brutish laugh, 
lying back in her chair, with her knees wide apart and 
her hands on her hips. A lamp stood near her on 
the long table around which the men were eating and 
drinking; under its torn shade the light flared un- 
evenly, lighting up some things with ruthless clear- 
ness and leaving others in complete darkness. Of 



4* 131 *§•> 

the men, I could see nothing distinctly except their 
heavy jaws and coarse hands and the lighter patches 
of their white shirts and blue smocks. I could make 
out very little of the large, low-ceilinged room. A 
rickety chair here; an old dresser there, with a few 
battered dishes on it. At regular intervals, a brass 
pendulum sends forth gleams as it catches the light; 
and the smouldering fire in the tall chimney-place 
flickers for a moment and illumines the strings of 
beans and onions drying round the hearth. On the 
floor, in the middle of the room, two little cowherds 
are quarrelling for the possession of a goose, no 
doubt won as a prize in the village. The poor thing, 
lying half-dead, with its wings and legs tied up, 
utters piteous sounds, which are the signal for a burst 
of laughter and coarse jokes. 

But suddenly all is silence. A door opens at the 
far end of the room and on the threshold stands the 
mistress, with a candle in her hand and some bot- 
tles under her arm. The fear inspired by the old 
madwoman is obvious at once. The two urchins 
take refuge under the table with their prey, Rose's 
laughter ceases abruptly and, through the window- 
panes, I hear the steady ticking of the clock and 
the clatter of the spoons in the bowls. 



4* 132 *§► 

The old woman has sat down in the full light. She 
is eating, with bent back, lowered head and jerky, 
nervous movements, while her wicked little sunken 
eyes peer from under her heavy, matted brows. She 
speaks some curt words in patois, too fast for 
me to catch their sense; but her strident voice 
hurts my ears. The conversation becomes livelier 
by degrees and soon everybody is speaking at 
once. . . . 

I wait in vain for an absent look, a gesture of an- 
noyance, an expression of pain on Rose's part. No, 
she seems at her ease among these people, as she 
was at the great house, as she is and as she will 
be everywhere. She follows the remarks of one and 
all and shows the same attention which she vouch- 
safes to me when I speak to her. From time to 
time, she says a word or two; and I recognise the 
shrill voice and the vulgar gestures that used to hurt 
me so much during our early talks. 

I remained there for a long time, always waiting, 
always hoping. Excited by liquor, the men began 
to quarrel; and I heard the old woman hurl a tor- 
rent of vile insults at them. Rose took the part of 
one of the men and interfered, using language as 
coarse as theirs. 



4* 133 4- 
S 

It was late when I went away. The clouds had 
dispersed, the wind had dropped; the moonbeams 
were making pools of silver on the ground through 
the trees; and, when I reached the open fields, they 
appeared to me cold, immense, infinite under a molten 
sky. 

The picture which I carry away with me seems to 
lose its colour before my eyes : it is harder and sad- 
der, made up of harsh lights and darker shadows, 
like an etching. I see the rough hands on the white 
deal table, the bony faces brutally outlined by a 
crude light. I hear the cracked voice of the 
old madwoman, now raised in yells of abuse, now 
breaking into song . . . and Rose . . . my beauti- 
ful Rose. . . . 

But I have stolen this sight of a life which I was 
never meant to see. The dishonesty of my invisible 
presence makes a gulf between my actual vision and 
my perception ; and it seems to me that, in this case, 
I must withhold my judgment even as we hold our 
breath before a flickering flame. 



PART THE SECOND 



Chapter I 



THERE is in love, in friendship or in the curiosity 
that drives us towards a fellow-creature a period of 
ascendency when nothing can quench our enthusiasm. 
The fire that consumes us must burn itself out; un- 
til then, all that we see, all that we discover feeds 
it and increases it. 

We are aware of a blemish, but we do not see it. 
We know the weakness that to-morrow perhaps will 
blight our joy, but we do not feel it. We hear the 
word that ought to deal our hopes a mortal blow; 
and it does not even touch them ! . . . And our rea- 
son, which knows, sees, hears and foresees, remains 
dumb, as though it delighted in these games which 
bring into play our heart and our capacity for feel- 
ing. Besides, to us women this exercise of the emo- 
tions is something so delightful and so salutary 
that our will has neither the power nor the inclina- 
tion to check it either in its soberest or its most 
extravagant manifestations. The influence of the 



«§* 138 *§> 

will would always be commonplace and sordid by the 
side of that generous force which is created by each 
impulse of the heart or mind. 

Upon every person or every idea that arouses our 
enthusiasm we have just so much to bestow, a definite 
sum of energy to expend, which seems, like that of 
our body, to have its own time and season. I have 
known Rose for hardly three months ; her picture is 
still vernal in my heart ; nothing can prevent its co- 
lours from being radiant with freshness, radiant with 
vigour, radiant with sunshine. I shall therefore go 
away without regret. I see the childishness of all 
the experiments to which I am subjecting the girl 
so as to know her a little better. My interest throws 
such a light upon her that she cannot, do what she 
will, shrink back into the shade. 

She is to me the incarnation of one of my most 
cherished ideas. Until I know all, I shall suspend 
my judgment and my intentions will not change. I 
believe that every seed in the rich soil of a noble 
heart has to fulfil its tender, gracious work of love 
and kindness. 

I cannot, therefore, lay upon Rose the burden of 
my disappointment last night ; and my affection sug- 
gests a thousand good reasons for absolving her. Is 



* 139 «§• 

this wrong? And are we to consider, with the sapient 
ones of the earth, that our vision is never clear until 
the day when we no longer have the strength to love, 
believe and admire? I do not think so. Setting aside 
the careful judgment which we exercise in the case 
of our companion for life, it is certain that our opin- 
ions on the others, on our chance acquaintances, are 
but an illusion and owe far more to our souls than 
to theirs. In our brief and crowded lives, we have 
barely time to catch a note of beauty here, to per- 
ceive a sign of truth there. If, therefore, we have 
to pass days and years without understanding every- 
thing and loving everything, if we have to remain 
under a misapprehension, why not choose that which 
is on the side of love and gladdens our hearts? 

We should take care of the images that adorn our 
soul. Our women's minds would possess more gra- 
ciousness if we bestowed upon them a little of the 
attention which we lavish on our bodies. 

My beautiful Rose is kind and loving; I will deck 
her with my hopes as long as I can. When enthusi- 
asm is shared, it is easy to keep it up. It weighs 
lightly in spite of its infinite preciousness. If I ever 
find it a strain, the reason will be that Rose did not 
really bear her share of it. It will become a burden 



<& 140 *§► 

and I shall relinquish it. All that she will have of 
me will be the careless charity bestowed upon the 
poor. 



"Paris, . . . 19— 
" If you knew, Rose, how I miss the lovely autumn 
landscapes ! The weather was so bright on the day 
of my departure that, to enjoy it to the full, I 
bicycled to the railway-town. After leaving the vil- 
lage, I took the road through the wood and it was 
delightful to skim along through the dead leaves, the 
softly-streaming tears of autumn. Sometimes, when 
a gust of wind blew, I went faster; and little yellow 
waves seemed to rise and fall and chase one another 
all around me. Some of the trees, not yet bare, 
but only thinned, traced an exquisite russet lace- 
work against the blue sky; and the birds warbled, 
cooed and whistled as in spring. I saw the noisy, 
crowded streets of Paris waiting for me at the end 
of my day; and this gave a flavour of sadness to 
the calm of the high roads, the pureness of the air, 
the dear beauty of the lanes. . . . 

" It was quite early in the morning and the fields 



«§* 141 *§* 

were still bathed in a dewy radiance. I sat down for 
a little while on a road-side bank ; an immense plain 
began at the level of my face and ended by rising 
slowly towards the sky. It was a very young field 
of corn, which the splendour of the day turned into 
pearly down. I could have looked at it for ever, at 
one moment letting the full glory of it burst on my 
dazzled eyes and then gradually lowering my lids 
down to the tiny threads that trembled and glittered 
in my breath. Then my mouth formed itself into 
a kiss ; and I amused myself by slowly and lovingly 
making the cool pearls of the morning die on my 
warm lips. . . ." 



3 



"Paris, . . . 19— 
" I see you, my Rose, laying supper in the 
wretched kitchen, while the farm-hands gather round 
the hearth. I like to picture you going cautiously 
through the old* woman's room at night, so as to 
write to me by the rays of the moon, without dis- 
turbing the household with an unwonted light. You 
come and sit on the ledge of the open window, to 
receive the full benefit of the moonbeams, and then 



4* 142 *§> 

you write on your knee those trembling lines which 
convey your emotion to me. 

" I see you in the wonderful setting of the silver- 
flooded orchard. The golden silk of your long 
tresses embroiders your white night-dress. Your 
eyes are filled with peace ; you are beautiful like that ; 
and there is nothing so sweet as an orchard in the 
moonlight. The apple-trees seem to lay their even 
shadows softly upon the pallor of the grass; and 
their ordered quiet spreads a serene and simple joy 
over nature's sleep. . . . 

" Rose, at the moving period that brought us to- 
gether, how I would that your sweet composure had 
been sometimes a little ruffled! It would have 
appeared to me of a finer quality had I found it more 
variable. A woman's reason should be less rigid; 
and I should loathe mine if it were not a leaven 
of indulgence and forgiveness in my life. . . . 

"Oh, Rose, Rose, tell me that the coldness of your 
soul springs from its wonderful purity ! Tell me that 
your heart is so deep that the sound of the joys which 
fall into it cannot be heard outside! Tell me that 
it is the storm of your life that has crushed the flow- 
ers of your sensibility for the time. . . . 

" I well know that our interest cannot always be 



active, that it must be suppressed; I know that in- 
difference is essential to the happy equilibrium of 
our faculties and that, beside the exaltation of our 
soul, it is the untroubled lake fertilising and refresh- 
ing the earth. And you will find, Rose, how necessary 
it is to be on our guard against it in our judgments 
and how it can take possession of some natures and 
slowly destroy them under a hateful appearance of 
wisdom ! I would rather discover ugly and active de- 
fects in you than that beautiful impassiveness. Be- 
sides, as I have told you many a time, the excellence 
that seems to me ideal has its weaknesses. It is 
rather a way of perfection for our poor humanity, 
a way that is all the better because it is adapted 
for our feeble and wavering steps ! . . . 

" Once, at harvest-time, I met you in the little 
road near the church. It was the end of the day ; and 
you were coming back from the fields. You were 
standing high on a swaying mountain of hay, you 
were driving a great farm-horse, which disappeared 
under its load. Your tall figure stood out against 
the sky ablaze with the last rays of the sun ; and 
I still see your look of absolute unconcern. You 
wore a long blue apron that came all round you and 
a bodice of the same colour. In that blue faded by the 



«§* 144 si- 
sun, with your hair a pale cloud in the gold of the 
sunset, you looked like an archangel taken from some 
Italian fresco. 

" As you passed me, you timidly returned my 
smile; and I followed you for a long time with my 
eyes. Do you still remember the trouble you had 
in passing under the dark vault of the old oaks? 
Every now and again, a branch, longer and lower 
than the others, threatened your face: you caught 
it with a quick movement and lifted it over your 
head. At one time, there were so many of those 
branches and they were so heavy that you were 
obliged to lie back on the hay, holding both arms 
over your face to save it from being struck. Then, 
when the lumbering wagon stopped in front of the 
farm, my archangel stepped down humbly into the 
mud, took the horse by the bridle and disappeared 
from sight. . . . 

" The reason why this memory now comes back to 
me is that I find in it some affinity with what I would 
ask of your reason: those simple movements by 
which you will be able to thrust aside the bad habits 
that disfigure you! May your reason be the beau- 
tiful archangel to guide and sway your humble life, 
but may it sometimes know how to descend and stoop 



«§* 145 *§> 

in obedience to the necessities of chance. Even as, 
on the day when I saw you, you could not alter the 
road which you had to follow, so you cannot alter 
your real nature; but you must * know the way,' you 
must guide and control." 



4 



"Paeis, . . . 19— 
" I am longing to have you here so that I may 
watch carefully over the slightest details of your 
life and put your temperament incessantly to the 
test. They say that enthusiasm cannot be acquired. 
But how can they tell that it is not merely sleeping, 
unless they try to awaken it? Those around us have 
sometimes, quite unconsciously, an unhappy way of 
subduing and oppressing us. 

" Even the most emotional have often to struggle 
lest their souls should shrink in the presence of cert- 
ain people, like the flowers whose petals exposed to 
the light timidly hide their hearts as soon as day 
declines. You, whom a placid humour reserves for 
gentle emotions, must try not to let that very beau- 
tiful nature exceed its rights, or cast an unnecessary 
shadow over your feelings, or ever check your finest 



«i* 146 *§► 

bursts of admiration with doubt and misgiving. Cir- 
cumstances have failed to form your taste; and at 
first you will pass marvels by and prefer to marvel 
at some hideous thing. Never mind ! I like to think 
that, after all, the best part of a noble work is the 
enthusiasm which it arouses and that the greatest 
dignity of art lies in the flame which it kindles. 

" Time was when I wept in front of things that 
now leave me unmoved ; but, in captivating my child- 
ish heart, did they not accomplish their task even 
as those do now which quicken the beating of my 
woman's heart? . . . 

" Learn to appreciate life and to look upon all 
that does not enhance it as vain and wearisome. As 
there is nothing in this world which has not its rela- 
tion to life, in loving it, my Roseline, you will un- 
derstand everything and accept everything. 

" I want your eyes, when presenting to your mind 
whatever is best in a great work, to learn the luxury 
of lingering on it; I want your ears to perceive the 
wonderful, voluptuous charm of sounds, your hands 
to rejoice in things soft to the touch; I want you 
to learn how to breathe with delight and how to eat 
with pleasure. Don't smile. None of all this is 
childish; it is made up of tiny joyous movements 



4* 147 * 

which the simplest existence can command when it 
knows how to recognise them. And yet . . . and 
yet I feel a selfish wish to leave you still in your 
prison, so that your desire to escape from it may 
keep on growing! I love that desire, I love your 
actual distress, I love the wretchedness of your past, 
the wretchedness of your present, I love you to see 
difficulties in the way of your deliverance. . . . 

" Oh, if those obstacles could give you, as they 
do me, that sort of intoxication for which I cherish 
them ! When at last I see the goal beyond them, my 
heart leaps for joy. But hardly is the goal attained 
when I rejoice in it only because it brings me to an- 
other, higher and more distant ; and my imagination 
resumes its course, never looking back except to 
measure the road already traversed. ... In this 
way, never satisfied and yet happy in the mere fact 
that I am advancing and in the knowledge that no 
more can be asked of a poor human will, I have the 
feeling that my life never stops." 



"Paris, . . . 19— 
" Dearest, it is evening ; it is cold and wet out 
of doors ; but peace and gaiety shed their radiance 



«§* 148 *§► 

in the great drawing-room which you will soon know, 
white and bare as a convent-parlour, living and 
bright as joy itself. Chance gave me to-day a long 
day of solitude, like those at Sainte-Colombe. And 
yet the hours passed before me and I could not make 
them fruitful. When such favours come to me in 
the midst of excitement, I am too glad of them to 
be able to profit by them; I can but feel them; and 
they control me without leaving me time to control 
them in my turn. I listen to my life, I contemplate 
it. It has too many opposing voices, too many abso- 
lutely different shapes ; my consciousness is lost in it 
as a precious stone is swallowed up by the sea. I 
blush at such chaos. My soul appears to me only -fit 
to compare with one of those wretched table-cloths 
which country dressmakers patch together, at the 
end of the year, out of the thousand scraps of the 
thousand different materials which they have cut du- 
ring the season. But is not this the natural result of 
the diversity of our feminine souls ? 

" Antagonistic elements have long been at war in 
me; and the violence of their blows has sometimes 
torn my life asunder. I no longer have cause to 
complain of it now, because time and love have helped 
me to reconcile them. Our powers are injurious 



to us so long as we do not know how to use them. 
I have suffered, I still suffer from my creeping know- 
ledge. I would like to increase the pace of yours. 
Is it impossible? 

" And so I dreamed all day and, of course, I 
dreamed of you, the Rose whom I am always pictur- 
ing. I imagined that we had arranged to see each 
other this evening. You walked into the drawing- 
room, drenched with the rain, pink-cheeked with the 
cold. You looked very pretty, in a frock that suited 
your face and your figure. You knew how to hold 
yourself! You knew how to walk! Your move- 
ments were graceful ! After talking for a little while 
by the fire, we both sat down at the table, under 
the lamp-light, and there began our usual work. 
What work it was I cannot tell; but it will be easy 
for us to choose: we have everything to learn; and 
I feel that both our minds must follow the same 
path for some time to come. By placing the same 
objects before them, we shall succeed in discovering 
what you really feel and what you really wish. That 
is the only way of delivering your mind from my 
involuntary dominion and of distinguishing your 
image from mine. I have no other ideal than to feel 
myself actually moving, even though the movement 



«§* 150 si- 
be an inconsistent one. How could I invite you to 
a similarity which is nothing but a perpetual dis- 
similarity ? 

"You must cease to be an echo. I shall map 
out no course for you ; and we do not know what will 
become of you. Let us first walk at random. The 
goal is not always visible; but very often the road 
travelled tells us which road to take next. It mat- 
ters little what work we do, provided that it gives 
a sort of tone to our meetings and that it regulates 
our hours. The freaks of chance and the youthful- 
ness of our minds will always furnish colour and 
fancy in plenty. . . . 

" Understand me, Roseline : it is not a friend that 
I am seeking, not one of those uncertain, light- 
hearted, capricious relations which encumber life 
without adding to it. I am dreaming like a child, 
of a woman who should realise the greatest possible 
amount of beauty in her mind and person and who 
should add her strength to mine in the service of 
the same ideals. Rose, are you that woman? Will 
you help me to deliver other women still who are op- 
pressed by circumstances or people, to deliver those 
who are shackled by prejudice or fear, to deliver the 
beauty that is unable to show itself and the will that 



«§* 151 *§* 

dares not act? To deliver! What a magic word! 
Rose, does it ring in your heart as it rings in 
mine? . . . 

" But, as you see, my dreams are carrying me too 
far; and I blush at my audacity. When I look at 
you and judge myself, it often seems to me that 
what I have done for you is only a form of vanity, 
that all my generous aspirations are but vanity ! . . . 
Is it true? 

" And, if it were ! Is it not still greater and more 
foolish vanity to require that all our actions should 
spring from pure and sublime motives? If, in con- 
tributing to your development, I am conscious that 
I am assisting my own, will yours be any the less 
complete for that? If I no longer know which is 
dearer, you, who represent my dreams, or my dreams, 
which have become embodied in yourself, will you on 
that account be less fondly and less nobly loved? 

" And, if it be true that vanity there is, is the 
vanity vain that sheds happiness and joy? " 



Chapter II 



A LONG month has passed since my return to Paris. 
Twice Rose has written to announce her arrival: I 
waited for her at the station and she did not come. 
Poor child ! We all know how difficult it is to break 
one's bonds, even the most detested. A thousand in- 
visible ties keep us in the place where chance has 
set us ; and, when we are about to rend them, they 
become so many unsuspected pangs. Instinct blindly 
resists all change, as though it were unable to dis- 
tinguish what reason dimly descries beyond the trials 
and dangers of the moment. Rose is leaving nothing 
but wretchedness ; in front of her is a fair and pleas- 
ant prospect. Nevertheless, she hesitates and she is 
unhappy. 

In my present restless state, I no longer know what 
I wish. If she came to-morrow, should I be glad or 
not? I cannot tell. I can no longer tell. Those 
who do not suffer from this absurd mania for action 
escape those painful moments when we are at the 



«§* 153 *§* 

mercy of a distracted will that no longer knows ex- 
actly what it ought to want. In absence, our feelings 
pass through so many contradictory phases 1 When 
the hour of return comes, finding it impossible to 
collect so many conflicting sentiments or to bring 
back to one point so many different desires, we sur- 
render ourselves to the impression of the moment; 
and this impression often has nothing in common 
with what we had previously felt and hoped. 

I have done my utmost to make her come. Lately, 
I have been sending her urgent and encouraging let- 
ters daily. Now, the hour is approaching; and my 
only feeling is one of anguish. 

I have told her twenty times that the talk about 
responsibility which I hear all around me brings a 
smile to my lips. I have told her how, by making my 
conduct depend on hers, I relieved myself of all per- 
sonal anxiety. And to-day my task appears to me 
so heavy that I can only laugh at my presumption. 



It was foolish of me to write to her : 

" What are your faults ? Teach me to know you. 
Tell me what you are." 



In reality, our faults arise from our circumstances. 
Events alone set us the questions to which our ac- 
tions give a definite answer. Up to the present, Rose 
has not lived ; she has been accumulating forces that 
are now about to come into being. What will they 
be? Whither will they tend? We can assume no- 
thing in a life that is but beginning ; and is it not just 
this that encourages us to seek and to help? Each 
of us has only to look back in order to know that, 
in the shifting soil of characters, we can fix or estab- 
lish nothing. I found her acquiescing in a shameful 
servitude ; and yet I have faith in the nobility of her 
soul. She was untruthful; there was no relation be- 
tween her wishes and her actions, her thoughts and 
her words. Nevertheless, I do not doubt her essen- 
tial honesty. 

The atmosphere that surrounds us is so often 
treacherous to our pliant natures ! We women are 
obliged to lie. So long as we have not found our 
" love," we look in vain for a little confidence. No 
one believes us, no one receives the best part of our 
soul. One would think that, for those who listen 
to us, our sincerest words are poisoned as they pass 
through our fairest smiles. And, when nature has 
made us beautiful and gifted, people take pleasure 



<gi 155 *§» 

in judging us severely, as they might look at the 
summer days through dark-tinted window-panes. 

We are always refused recognition. The first feel- 
ing which any work that we perform arouses is one 
of doubt. Its merit is disputed. And yet we have 
devoted a part of our youth to it; we have left with 
it a little of our freshness and our bloom. Very 
often, it is the ransom of our sorrow. Our love 
is written upon it ; and it bears the imprint alike 
of our smiles and of our tears. Do we not know that 
woman, for all her culture, remains closer than man 
to her instinct and her " soil? " She is less purely 
intellectual but more sensitive than man; and, while 
he can create everything in the silence of his imagi- 
nation, she has to live and suffer everything that she 
brings into the world. She conceives and realises 
with her flesh and with her blood. 

A woman said to me, one day: 

" If I had to begin life over again, I should not 
have the courage to avoid a single danger, pain or 
disappointment. In surmounting them, I have gained 
a power of resistance which forms the framework of 
my present and my future. I can see the sparkle 
of my happiness better when I keep in the shadow 
of my sad memories ; and all that I accomplish, all 



«§* 156 *§> 

that I write seems to me to flow from my past 
tears." 

To refuse recognition to a woman's work is to re- 
fuse to recognise her soul, her existence and every 
throb of her heart ! . . . 

Man does not know that torture which every true 
woman suffers when she feels that those who are 
listening to her do not hear her real words, that 
those who are looking at her do not see what she is 
making every effort to show. Even when she is obey- 
ing the simplest impulses of her nature, people dis- 
trust what she says and what she does ; and in some 
women, good and kind and beautiful, we see repeated 
the artless miracle of the flowers that exhaust them- 
selves in giving too much fragrance and too much 
blossom. How fearful and timid this moral isola- 
tion makes us ! And how thrice courageous we must 
be in the hour of realisation! If effort sometimes 
seems useless to men, what about women, who see 
themselves ever confronted by a blank wall of scep- 
ticism ? 

A man is valued by the weight of the forces which 
he stirs up for and against himself. The forces 
which woman encounters are nearly all hostile. 



* 157 & 

3 

I was close upon sixteen. One day, I heard some 
one say, speaking of some trifling thing of which I 
was wrongly suspected: 

" She is no longer a child. She's a woman now 
and she's lying." 

That was a cruel speech, the sort of speech that 
influences a whole life. My eyes were gradually 
opened to the dreary injustice that casts its shadow 
over the fairest destinies of women. Nothing around 
them seems clear and natural. Doubt lies in wait 
for them, calumny rends them. Now my hour was 
coming: my skirts, touching the ground for the first 
time, had suggested the suspicion of deceit and 
hypocrisy. 

It was perhaps this wound, inflicted on the soul 
of the growing girl, that left the most serious mark 
on my soul as a woman. Thanks to a strange prick 
of conscience, to a singular need to give to others 
what I did not obtain, I wanted to trust and I did 
trust ! I gave my confidence passionately, utterly, 
rapturously ! And this made wells of such deep and 
impetuous joy spring up in me that I felt no bit- 
terness when I saw my confidence marred as it passed 



«§* 158 si- 
through others, even as a clear stream is muddied 
in following its course. 

Still, I wanted more; I sought to concentrate in 
one person, herself generous and confiding, the hap- 
piness which I lacked and whose infinite value I sus- 
pected. Ah, what a blessed relief when I found her ! 
I was as one who has never seen his face save in 
distorting mirrors and who suddenly sees himself as 
he hoped to be. It seems to me that my happiness 
dates from that day. Before then, I suffered, I was 
all astray, an ill wind hovered round me; and, on 
the sands of other lives, there was never a trace of 
my footsteps where I believed that I had passed. 
Henceforth, another soul would read mine! An- 
other's eyes would own the candour of my eyes ! 

It was little more than a child that introduced me 
to love and kindness. She was treated with iron 
severity, she was unhappy; I was alone: she became 
my daily companion. Alas ! too early ripe, too in- 
telligent, she was of those who cannot stay. Is it 
a presentiment that makes them hurry so, or is it 
rather their eagerness to live, their over-sharpened 
senses that wear out their strength? 



4* 159 *§* 

4 

She was not fifteen ; but, already matured in body 
and mind, she attracted immediate attention. Her 
walk was so superb that I cannot think of her with- 
out seeing her come swiftly to me, with that dear 
smile of hers and with her lovely arms outstretched 
in greeting. Her limpid eyes obeyed the light, the 
light of her heart and the light of the sky, whereas 
her dark hair, always tangled and rebellious, bore 
witness to the protest of her dauntless spirit. In 
her company I tasted for the first time the delight 
of souls that join and blend and unite in mutual 
trust. In an ecstasy of sincerity, for hours I imag- 
ined myself baptising her whole life with my faith. 
I said to her, over and over again : 

" I believe in you. ... I believe in you. . . . Do 
you understand what that means? It is something 
greater and better than ' I love you : ' it means that 
one can never be alone again ! " 

She died a few months later; and for years I was 
to seek in vain in others' hearts and eyes the pure 
and limpid faith which reflects everything that bends 
over it. 

One can love people without knowing them fully; 



«§* 160 *f* 

one cannot believe in them without mingling one's 
soul with theirs; and the moral luxury of it is so 
great that, when we have once known it, if only for 
a moment, we demand it from all with whom we come 
in contact. 

Roseline, all that I then wished for, that charming 
bond of tenderness and confidence which should link 
women together, that difficult and precious happi- 
ness which I knew for one hour through that child- 
soul : that is what I am trying to off er you. 

And perhaps you will have something better still, 
because the assistance which you receive is deliber- 
ate and has stood the test. In the place of that 
artless faith rushing to meet life, you find a soul 
that has been steeped in it. Rose, may my faith and 
my soul be your two mirrors. In one, you will see 
your forces rise even as we catch the first swell of 
a cornfield at dawn. In the other, they will appear 
to you enlarged, multiplied, transformed according 
to nature's laws, ripened by the dazzling suns of 
noon, utilised by the intellect, ready at last to nour- 
ish you and nourish others. 



4* 161 *§* 
5 

Then I met men, I met other women, without ever 
attaining the wish of my heart. The}' came and 
went. But, at each soul that I lost, I found my own 
a little more and I remember most gratefully those 
who were the most cruel. This man was ill and un- 
conscious of his actions; that woman was wicked; 
that man too frivolous ; and another was a liar. . . . 

A liar! Even to-day, among those withered at- 
tachments which it pleases me to evoke, this last 
arrests my thoughts. For it was he — O singular 
contrast ! — who, by his lying and duplicity, finished 
the work begun by the frank confidence of the child. 

He was a liar. — Lying came to him so easily 
and naturally that he himself did not discriminate 
between what he had done and what he had said, be- 
tween what he had actually experienced and the life 
which he pretended to have lived. His was a strange 
nature, which, in its eagerness to seem, forgot to 
be, a nature which, no longer distinguishing its front- 
iers from another's, lost in the end its own domain! 
A strange example of a strayed consciousness which, 
knowing no dividing line, attributed the acts of oth- 
ers to itself, spoke from their hearts and led their 



<& 162 *§•» 

existences! He walked through life as one walks 
through a gallery whose walls are panelled with mir- 
rors. He could not take a step without thinking 
that he was taking a thousand; and his vanity en- 
hanced his least actions to such a degree that he 
actually believed himself the lover of a woman if 
he merely kissed her hand. It was thus that he 
boasted of making innumerable conquests at every 
hour of the day ; and, to hear him talk, always tired 
and exhausted with love, he was a wreck at twenty, as 
the price of his inordinate exploits. Enamoured of 
his appearance, he saw nothing beyond the blankness 
of his little soul, or rather he made it the origin and 
the end of everything. Poor empty head ! Wretched 
puppet, whose spring was the vanity which every 
passer-by could set in motion at will ! 

At a time when I myself did not know it, he had 
cleverly discovered what he must appear to be in or- 
der to arouse my enthusiasm, thus offering me the 
illusion of that faith which I aspire to awaken in you, 
my Roseline. Certainly, I owe him much ! If an ex- 
act copy of a masterpiece can stir us as deeply as the 
original, the perfect impersonation of a fine intel- 
lect and a noble character can influence us very 
happily. How grateful I am to him for the trou- 



& 163 *> 

ble which he took to give me a representation of vir- 
tues which he did not possess ! They were painted on 
his soul in such relief, a relief which no reality gives, 
as I was afterwards to learn ! The artificial lilies 
that decorate the chapel of the church hard by have 
an assurance that is absent from those which will 
soon fade over there, on the table. The false boasts 
an unvarying brilliance, an imposing emphasis which 
we never find in the true. And, no doubt, the quali- 
ties of which he vouchsafed me the sight would never 
have had such value in my eyes, if his fatuousness 
had not displayed them to my youthful admiration 
as one shows an object behind a magnifying-glass. 

And what does it matter to me now that they were 
false, those gifts with which that soul seemed laden, 
if for a moment I pictured them as real ! After the 
eror was dispelled, the image which I once thought 
true remained in me. It had determined my tastes, 
fixed my opinions, set my mind at rest. Subse- 
quently, I was to try and refashion the perfection of 
which I had beheld the mirage and, with still greater 
ardour, I was to pursue in others and conquer at 
last the reality of the once-known happiness which 
I thought that I had found in him. 

We are none the poorer when a sad truth takes the 



«§* 164 *§•> 

place of a beautiful dream. Knowledge has already 
filled the void which the lost illusion leaves be- 
hind it. . . . 



6 



Let us seek then, Rose, let us seek even after we 
have found! Whether we be denied or heard, let us 
go on seeking! When we have lovingly performed 
the little things necessary that a flower may perad- 
venture blossom, if it does not give us what we hoped 
for, does that prevent us from loving another ex- 
actly like it and from tending it with all the greater 
skill and care? 

Our ignorance must be renewed in the presence of 
each life that touches ours. May the quest suffice 
to keep our faith eternally young, that wonderful, 
childlike faith which alone encourages, finds and sets 
free. 



Chapter III 



It was eleven o'clock when I went to meet Rose 
this morning; but the day was so dark and the fog 
so dense that the street-lamps were still lit. 

It was gloomy and depressing. Wrapped in a 
long cloak and huddled in a corner of the cab, I 
shivered with cold and nervousness. I reread her 
telegram, dispatched from a railway-station before 
daybreak; and the pathos of those few words went 
to my heart: 

" Am starting. Ran away yesterday. 

" Your Baby." 

Yesterday? Then she had spent the night at an 
inn ? Why ? 

Alas, in such circumstances, do not we women usu- 
ally behave like that, blindly and illogically? We 
prepare everything, we look out the trains and choose 
the most favourable time for flight; we announce the 



«§* 166 *§► 

minute of our arrival to those expecting us ; every- 
thing is ready, everything is decided. . . . Then the 
appointed day arrives. The hour strikes, the hour 
passes and we do not stir. We have been kept by 
some meaningless trifle which is magnified in our ex- 
citement and acquires an importance which it never 
had before : a word, a look from those whom we are 
going to desert. We forgive them when we are on 
the point of leaving them for ever. We invest them 
with a little of our own gentleness and kindness. 
Even as the colour of things blurs and fades when 
our eyes are dim with tears, so the hardest people 
do not appear so to the anxious heart of a woman. 
And pity gains the upper hand, time slips by and 
we put off to the morrow and, on the morrow, we put 
off again. . . . 

Then, one day, we depart all at once, for no defi- 
nite reason, depart empty-handed, with an impassive 
face and without looking round. We perform the 
most energetic action almost without knowing it, 
for even our will shirks the too-heavy task. It dreads 
the preparations, it would like to be able to tell us 
feebly that nothing is done, that nothing is decided, 
that we can still go back to the past; and this is 
enough to hurry our steps towards the future. We 



4* 167 & 

go, we walk on and on, we walk till we are tired. 
Then does it not seem as if each minute shifted the 
problem of our destiny a little more? And in a 
few hours would it not need more courage to return 
than to continue our road? 

But it is nearly always so, by little unforeseen acts, 
by fear as much as by weakness, that we perform the 
inaugural act of our enfranchisement. We flee be- 
wildered, like poor beasts that have broken loose; 
and the first movements of our liberty echo in our 
hearts with a melancholy sound of dangling chains. 



2 



My dear Rose! ... As I go through the damp, 
dark station, I am already picturing her fright. . . . 

The train arrives, full of passengers, who hurry 
towards the exit in surging black masses. How shall 
I recognise her in this crowd, in the fog? I do 
not know what she will look like. A lady? A serv- 
ant? A servant, I expect, because she will have had 
nothing ready. I hope so ; and I look out eagerly 
for a black knitted hood on a head of golden hair. 
I am afraid lest she should not see me in her excite- 
ment and nervousness. The flood of passengers 



«§* 168 sf- 
separates on either side of the ticket-collector; and 
I keep close to him, standing desperately on tip- 
toe. . . . 

The crowd has passed and I have not caught sight 
of her. There are still a few people coming from the 
far end of the train ; it is so dark that I can hardly 
see. . . . There is a tall figure all over feathers in 
the distance, but it cannot be . . . And yet . . . 
yes, yes, it is she ! Gracious goodness, what a sight ! 
... I feel that it would be better to laugh, but I 
can't; and I am furious with myself for keeping a 
grave face. It is Rose ! Rose dressed like a Sainte- 
Colombe lady! 

She comes along, calmly, smiling and self-pos- 
sessed; and I am now able to distinguish the painful 
hues of that appalling garb: the little red-velvet hat, 
studded with glass stones of every imaginable colour 
and trimmed with green feathers of the most ag- 
gressive shade and style; the serge skirt, too short 
in front; the black jacket, quite simple, it is true, 
but so badly cut that it murders the figure of the 
lovely girl ! She has a large basket, carefully corded, 
on her arm. I really suffer tortures while she kisses 
me effusively and says, gaily : 

" You are looking very well, dearest ; but you're 



upset: what's the matter? " And, before I have time 
to answer, she adds in a triumphant tone, " I have a 
great surprise for you. Look in the basket, look ! " 

I need not trouble: at that moment there comes 
from the basket a pandemonium of terrified quacks 
and flapping wings. 

" Yes," Rose continues, laughing merrily, " I stole 
the old woman's best two ducks and that's why I'm 
here. . . . But first I must tell you, I have been 
looking after them for a month, fattening them for 
your benefit; I would not go before they were just 
right. And what do you think? All of a sudden, 
she said, at dinner, that she was going to market to- 
day to sell them ! It gave me an awful turn. As 
soon as I could leave the kitchen, I flew to the 

poultry-yard and I took the train to and 

slept there. Luckily, I had already sent my trunk 
to an hotel." 

I looked at Rose in stupefaction: 

"Your trunk?" 

She went on, with her eyes full of cunning: 

" Oh, your baby was rather clever ! ... As the 
old woman never paid me during the whole of the 
four years, I worked out what a farm-servant gets 
a year and I decided that I was justified in opening 



<& 170 *§► 

an account in her name with one of our customers 
who keeps a big drapery-store. And so I now have 
a trunk and a complete outfit, as well as these pretty 
things which I have on. It was only fair, wasn't 
it?" 

I turned away my head without a word. It was 
certainly quite fair; but I felt my cheeks flushing 
scarlet. 

Rose gave a yawn which ended in a groan: 

" I'm starving. Suppose we had some lunch ; we 
could come back for the trunk afterwards." 

I eagerly agreed and hurried her to the exit. 
From the top of the stairs, I saw that the fog had 
lifted at last; the gas-lamps had been put out and 
the street lay before us in a melancholy, wan light. 
The pavements were covered with mud and the 
houses showed yellow and smoke-grimed. Then I 
looked at Rose and my torture suddenly became more 
than I could bear. I placed her in front of me and 
feverishly unbuttoned the clumsy jacket, which was 
too tight at the neck, too narrow across the shoul- 
ders and gave her no waist at all. It fell away on 
either side; her bust showed full and uncompressed 
in a light-coloured blouse; and I breathed more 
freely. 



«S* 171 *§* 

" Now, take off your hat." 

She slowly obeyed; and the gloomy station and 
the wretched, grimy day were suddenly illuminated. 
Oh, those lovely fair curls, which had been crushed 
and pushed away under the hideous hat with its too 
narrow brim, what bliss it was to see them again 
full of life and laughter! There they were in their 
graceful, natural clusters, some drooping over her 
forehead, some brushing her cheeks, others kissing 
her neck and ears ! How pretty she was ! I recognised 
my Rose at last in her soft, golden, shimmering, im- 
palpable, incredible tresses. I passed my fingers 
lightly over that silk for love's loom, while my eyes 
feasted on its delicate colour. No, indeed, nothing 
was lost. Rose was beautiful, more beautiful than 
ever; and the glad words came crowding to my lips. 
I forgave her and was angry with myself for my 
coldness. 

Poor child, she did not know! She had thought, 
no doubt, that, to go to Paris, she must absolutely 
have a hat; and how was she to choose one in a 
village-shop? And I told her over and over again 
how fond I was of her. 

Rose, a little uncomfortable, with crimson cheeks 
and downcast eyes, stood awkwardly turning the un- 



«§* 172 *§► 

fortunate object in her hands. I looked round : a few 
people, intent on their business, were hurrying this 
way and that; there was no one on the staircase. 
Then, bursting with laughter, I dashed the Hat to 
the floor and, with the tip of my shoe, precipitated 
it into space. . . . 

" Come over to the other side," I said to Rose. 
" Quick ! . . . Suppose they brought it back ! " 

Good-natured as always and pleased at my amuse- 
ment, she laughed because I laughed; and, while we 
ran to the other exit, the masterpiece of Sainte- 
Colombe millinery rolled and rolled and hopped from 
stair to stair. 



The bustle of the restaurant and the noise of the 
street outside affected me tremendously. I was 
nervous and excited, with a wild desire to laugh at 
everything and nothing. I asked Rose all sorts of 
questions ; and, whenever any one passed : 

"Look!" I said. "Do look! . . . You're not 
looking! . . . There, that's a pretty dress, a regu- 
lar Parisienne ! . . . And, over there, by the door : 
don't you see that queer woman? " 



* 173 *> 

The girl looked and then turned to me and, be- 
fore I could prevent her, bent down and kissed my 
hand. I wanted to say : 

" You mustn't do that, Rose ! " 

But it was the first charming impulse she had 
shown: how could I scold her? Oh, what a miserable 
thing our education is ; and how often should I 
not find myself in some ridiculous dilemma ! 

Besides, I wished this first day of hers to be all 
happiness and expectation ! And, while we gaily dis- 
cussed plans for the future, I tried to guess what 
she must be feeling, I scrutinised her movements, I 
interpreted her words. But it appeared too soon 
yet ; and it was I, alas, I who had the best part of 
her happiness ! My eyes fell on her chapped and 
swollen hands. She noticed it and murmured, sadly : 

" It's the beetroots. You understand, it's the 
hard season now." 

" But the beetroot-days are past, my Roseline ! 
The bad seasons are over, over for good, over for 
good and all ! " 

And I laid stress on every syllable ; and, though 
I was whispering in her ear, I heard the words " for 
good and all " bursting from my lips like a trium- 
phant shout. 



«§* 174 si- 
She smiled and went on eating, doing her best to 
eat nicely, with her elbows close to her sides and her 
hands by her plate. Heaven above, did she under- 
stand what I said? 



There are some people who seem detached from 
themselves. They do something ; and the whole flood 
of their life does not surge into the action! They 
draw near to the object of their love; and their 
whole soul does not fill their eyes ! Their soul is 
not on their lips, to breathe love; it is not at their 
finger-tips, to seize upon happiness; it is not there 
to watch life, to attract all that passes, eagerly, 
greedily and rapturously! Then where is it and 
what is it doing outside this dear, delightful 
earth? . . . 

And yet woman, the creature who learns through 
love the admirable gift of life, knows better than man 
how to throw the whole of herself into fleeting mo- 
ments. She lives nearer to the edge of her actions. 
Her mind, which rarely attaches itself to abstract 
things, seems to float around her in search of every 
sensation. Woman passes and has seen everything; 



«§* 175 *!* 

she remembers and she quivers as though the 
caressing touch were still upon her. Her light and 
charming soul drinks eternity straight out of the 
present; and through a man's kisses she has known 
the art of absolute oblivion. 

I am afraid that Rose is not much of a woman. 
Ah, were I in her place, I should be wild with excite- 
ment, out of my mind with joy, as though I were 
hearing my own name spoken for the first time ! 



After lunch, our shopping was a difficult matter. 
Rose, with her uncommon figure, could hardly find 
anything ready-made to suit her. I had to hunt 
about and to contrive with thought, for I would 
not wait a single day. I was careful to select the 
quietest and most usual things for her, so as to 
conceal her rusticity as far as possible. The neat 
dark-velvet toque could have its position altered on 
her head without much harm. The black veil would 
tone down the vividness of a complexion too long 
exposed to the open air ; and its fine plain net would 
set off the admirable regularity of her features. 
Lastly, the deep leather belt to her tailor-made frock 



«§* 176 *§► 

and the well-starched collar and cuffs would more 
or less hide the effort which it cost her to hold her- 
self upright. 



6 



Two hours later, I introduced Rose to her new 
home. We climbed a dark, interminable staircase. I 
held a flickering candle in my hand; and, all out of 
breath, I explained to her the advantages of this 
boarding-house, a quiet place where her privacy 
would not be invaded and where she could make use- 
ful acquaintances if she wished. . . . 

At last, we reached the fifth floor. The daylight 
had faded. A sea of roofs was beneath us ; and, 
through the panes above our heads, a great red sky 
cast lurid gleams over our faces and hands. The 
girl gave a start of pleasure as she entered her room. 
It was peaceful and white; but the flaming fire and 
sky at that moment turned it quite rosy, smiling and 
aglow. From the rather high window we could see 
nothing but space. I had placed a writing-table un- 
derneath it, with some books and a few flowers in a 
dainty crystal bowl. On the walls, several photo- 
graphs of Italian masterpieces disguised the ugli- 



ness of the typical boarding-house paper. The chim- 
ney-mantel was bare and the furniture very simple. 

We were both happy, both talking at once, Rose 
exclaiming: 

" It's really too lovely, too beautiful ! " 

And I was saying: 

" I should have liked to have a room for you ar- 
ranged after my own taste, but I had to keep within 
bounds. So I brought a few little things, as you see, 
and bundled the ugly pictures, the tin clock and the 
plush flowers into the cupboards. But come and see 
the best part of it." 

I threw open the window ; and, leaning out, we 
beheld a great expanse beyond the enormous gutter 
that edged the roof. Unfortunately, the last glow 
of the sunset was swiftly dying away in the mist 
rising from the Seine. Opposite us, on the other 
bank, the Louvre became a heavy, shapeless mass; 
on the right, Notre-Dame was nothing but a sha- 
dowy spectre ; here and there, in a chance, lingering 
gleam, we could just distinguish a steeple, a turret, 
a house standing out above the rest. 

"We came in too late, Rose; we can see nothing; 
but how wonderful it all is ! The sound of the quays 
and bridges hardly reaches us, the city might be 



^ 178 4§» 

veiled ; at this height, its activity is like a dream and 
I seem to be living over again those quiet moments 
which we used to spend side by side at Sainte- 
Colombe. Are you happy ? " 

Smiling and with her eyes still fixed on the sky, 
she says: 
" Yes." 
"Perfectly?" 
" Yes." 

" You are not afraid of the future ? " 
" Not for my sake, but I am for yours." 
I question her with my eyes ; and she adds : 
" I am afraid that I shall never be what you want." 
I put my hand on her shoulder and said : 
" You will be what you are to be ; and that is the 
main thing. It seems to me at this moment that 
the greatest ideas are nothing, that the fairest 
dreams are childish compared with the simple real- 
ity of a human being's first taste of happiness. You 
were hidden ; and I bring you to the light. You were 
a prisoner; and I set you free. I see nothing to 
fetter you ; and that is all I ask. The life of a beau- 
tiful woman should be like a star whose every beam 
is the source of a possible joy. . . . I am glad, for 
this is the day of your first deliverance." 



4* 179 *§► 

Rose murmured: 

" What will the second be, then? " 
I hesitated for a moment. Then I replied: 
" It is difficult to say, dear ; you will come to know 
gradually. I might answer, that of your mental or 
moral life; but I do not wish to lay down any rule. 
You are about to start on life's journey; I do not 
wish to trace your road with words. How much 
more precious your smallest actions are to me ! " 

I closed the window and went and sat in a chair 
by the fire-place. Rose, standing with uplifted arms 
in front of the glass, took off her hat and veil, then 
undid her mantle and her scarf and put everything 
carefully away in the wardrobe. My eyes followed 
her quiet movements and my heart rested on each 
of them. I spoke her name and she came and sat 
at my feet, against my knees, with her soft, fair 
head waiting for my caress. 

It was now night; the fire lit our faces, but the 
room was dark wherever the flames did not cast their 
gleams. A chrysanthemum on a longer stalk than 
the others bent its petals into the light. Opposite 
the fire-place, within the shade of the bed-curtains, 
stood a white figure from the Venice Accademia, an 
allegory representing Truth. We could not see the 



^ 130 si- 
mirror which she holds nor the details that surround 
her. The pedestal that raises her above mankind 
was also invisible ; only the nude body of the woman 
invited and retained the light. 

I called Rose's attention to her: 

" Look, she is more interesting like that. In the 
doubt which the shadow casts around her, I see in 
her a more human and a truer truth." 

After a moment's contemplation, Rose said, 
gravely : 

" I will never hide one of my thoughts from you." 

Her statement makes me smile; but why disap- 
point her? She did not yet know that those who 
are most sincere find it more difficult than the others 
to say what they think. Words, in their souls, are 
like climbing plants which, sown by chance in the 
middle of a roadway, waver and grope, send out 
tendrils here and there in despair and end by entan- 
gling themselves with one another. Whereas most 
people, just as we provide supports for flowers, be- 
stow certainties and truths upon their words to which 
they cling, the sincere refuse to yield to any such 
illusions. They hesitate, stammer and contradict 
themselves without ceasing, . . . 



«§* 181 *§•> 

7 

I drew her head down on my knees ; and, softly, in 
little sentences interrupted by long pauses, we spoke 
of the new life that was opening before her. Soon 
she said nothing more. The fire went out, the room 
became dark and a clock outside struck six. I whis- 
pered : 

" I am going, darling. . . ." 

She did not move and I saw that she was asleep. 
Then I gently released myself, put a pillow under 
her head and a wrap over her shoulders and was al- 
most at the door, when suddenly I pictured her 
awakening. It would not do for her to open her 
eyes in the dark, to feel lost and alone in an 
unknown house. I lit the lamp, drew the blinds 
and made up the fire. 

Roseline was sleeping soundly. Her breathing 
was hardly perceptible. At times, a deep sigh 
sent a quiver through her placid beaut} 7 , even as 
a keener breath of air ripples the surface of a 
pool. 

What would she do if she should soon awake? . . . 
I looked around. Everything was peaceful and smi- 
ling; the flowers looked fresh and radiant in the 



«§* 182 *§► 

light; the books on the table seemed to be waiting. 
... I searched among them for some page to charm 
her imagination and guide her first dreams along 
pleasant paths. . . . 



Chapter IV 



ROSE is sitting by the fire with her bare feet in 
slippers and a dressing-wrap flung loosely round 
her. 

"Are you ill?" 

" No," she says, smiling. 

And her cool hands, pressing mine, and her gay 
kisses on my cheeks are no less reassuring than the 
actual reply. 

" But why are you not dressed?" 

" I don't know ; time passed and I let them bring 
my lunch up to me." 

I look round the darkened bedroom. Through the 
blind which I lowered yesterday, the light enters tim- 
idly, in a thousand broken little shafts ; on the table, 
the books still lie as I placed them ; on the chimney- 
shelf, the flowers, withered by the heat of the fire, 
are fading and drooping. 

All these things which had been left untouched were 
evidence of a lethargy that hurt me. All the emo- 



4* 184 *§► 

tions which I had been picturing Rose as experien- 
cing since the day before had not so much as brushed 
against her. One by one, they dropped back sadly 
upon my heart. 

I rose, moved the flowers, opened the window ; and 
the bright sunshine restored my confidence. 

" Come, darling, dress and let's go out." 

A thousand questions come crowding to my lips 
while I help her do her hair: 

" Do they look after you well ? Do you feel very 
lonely? What are the other boarders like? Are any 
of them interesting? " 

Her answers, sensible and placid as usual, did not 
tell me much, except that the food was good, that 
she had slept well and that she was very comfor- 
table. 

I resolved to wait a few days before asking her 
any more. 



Roseline throws off her wrap and begins dressing. 
The water trickles from the sponge which she 
squeezes over her shoulders, runs down, lingers here 
and there and disappears along the flowing lines 



«§* 185 *§► 

of her body, which, in the broad daylight, looks 
as though it were flooded with diamonds. A cool 
fragrance mingles with the scent of the roses. The 
room is filled with beauty. 



Chapter V 



It snowed last night for the first time; then it 
froze ; and the trees in the Tuileries are now showing 
the white lines of their branches against a dreary 
sky. The daylight seems all the duller by compari- 
son with the glitter of the snow-covered ground. . . . 
I slowly follow the little black path made by the 
sweepers; I receive an impression of solitude; the 
streets are very still; it is as though sick people lay 
behind the closed windows ; and the voices of the 
children playing as I pass seem to come to me 
through invisible curtains. 

Rose is walking beside me. A keen wind plasters 
our dresses against us and raises them behind into 
dark, waving banners. The icy air whitens the fine 
pattern of our veils against our mouth. 

" Where are we going? " asks Rose. 

I hesitate a little before replying: 

" We are going to the Louvre." 

And to put her at her ease and also to guard 



4* 187 *§* 

against a probable disappointment, I hasten to 
add: 

" It is a picture-book which we will look at to- 
gether. You will turn first to what is bright and 
attractive to the eye; later on, you will perceive 
the shades in the colour, the lines in the form and 
the expression in the subject. And, if at first our 
admiration is given to what is poor and unworthy, 
what does it matter, so long as it is aroused at 
all? " 

2 

We had reached the foot of the stairs that lead 
to the Victory of Samothrace. After staring at it 
for a minute, Rose remarked, in a voice heavy with 
indifference : 

" It's beautiful, very beautiful." 

I felt that she had no other object than that of 
pleasing me ; but her natural honesty soon prevailed 
when I asked her what she admired; and she an- 
swered, simply: 

" I don't know." 

It is in this way, by never utterly and altogether 
disappointing me, that she keeps her hold on me. 
She sees and feels nothing of what we call beautiful; 



«§* 188 *§•> 

on the other hand, she is cheerfully oblivious to the 
necessity of assuming what she does not feel; she 
has no idea of posing either to herself or to others; 
and the strange coldness of her soul makes my 
affection all the warmer. By not trying to appear 
what she is not, she constantly keeps alive in me 
the illusion of what she may be or of what she will 
become. 

We walked quickly through a number of rooms and 
sat down in a quiet corner. I was already under the 
spell of that deep, reposeful life which emanates from 
some of the Primitives; but Roseline, who had 
stopped on the way in order to have a better view 
of various ugly things, was talking and laughing 
loudly. 

This annoyed me ; and I was on the point of tell- 
ing her so. However, I restrained myself: I should 
have felt ashamed to be angry with her. Was she 
not gay and lively, as I had wished to see her ? What 
right have we to let ourselves be swayed by the va- 
garies of our instinct and expect our companion to 
feel the same obligation of silence or speech at any 
given moment? Our emotion should strike chords so 
strong and true that no minor dissonances of vary- 
ing temperaments can make them ring false. 



4* 189 *§> 

Rose cliattcred away for a long time, speaking all 
in the same breath of her convent days, of her ter- 
rible godmother, of the scandal which her sudden 
disappearance must be creating in the village. Then 
she stopped; and I felt her eyes resting vacantly by 
turns upon myself and upon the square in the ceil- 
ing which at that moment framed a patch of grey 
sky studded with whirling snow-flakes. At last, she 
raised her veil with an indolent movement, put her 
hand on my shoulder and, with a long yawn that 
revealed all the pearly freshness of her mouth, asked: 

" But what do you see in it? " 

I slipped my arm under hers and led her away 
through the deserted rooms. I ought to have spoken. 
But how empty are our most pregnant words, when 
we try to express one iota of our admiration ! 

" Why should you mind what I see, my Roseline? 
It is you and you alone who can discover what you 
like and what interests you." 

We were passing in front of Titian's Laura de* 
Dianti. I was struck with the relationship that ex- 
isted between her and my companion. Although Rose 
was different in colouring, fairer, with lighter eyes, 
she had the same purity of feature, the thin, straight 
nose, the very small mouth and, above all, the same 



<•§* 190 *§* 

vague look that lends itself to the most diverse inter- 
pretations. She squeezed my arm : 

" Speak to me, speak to me ! " 

I glanced at her. Must it always be so, would she 
never feel anything except when my own emotion 
found utterance? Impressions reached her soul only 
after filtering through mine. Love, I thought to my- 
self, love alone would perhaps one day set free all 
the raptures now jealously hidden in those too- 
chaste nerves. And, in spite of myself, I exclaimed : 

" Don't you think that admiration in a woman is 
only another form of love ? " 

" But when she is no longer young? " Rose re- 
torted, with a laugh. 

" When she is no longer young, nature doubtless 
suggests other means of enthusiasm. Her heart is 
no longer a bond of union between her and things. 
Then her calmer eyes are perhaps able to look at 
beauty itself, without having all the joys of a 
woman's love-filled life to kindle their fires." 

The Rubens pictures were around us, in all their 
brilliancy and in all their glory, uttering cries of 
passion and luxury with voices of flesh and blood 
and youth. They were another proof of what I 
had just said; and I confessed to my companion: 



* 191 *§► 

" It is not so long ago, Rose, that I used to pass 
unmoved through this dazzling room where the Ru- 
bens flourish in their luscious beauty. I used to look 
at them : now, I see them ; I used to brush by them : 
now, I grasp them. I enter into all this riot of 
happiness around us, which is a thousand miles away 
from you, Rose; and it adds to my own joy in 
life. . . ." 

" But then what has come to you? " exclaimed the 
girl. 

I could not help smiling, for, when I tried to ex- 
plain myself, it seemed to me that, in the depths of 
my heart, I was playing with words: 

" All that hurt me yesterday has become a source 
of admiration to me to-day. Excess appears riches 
and plenty, tumult becomes orderly ; and I seem to 
see in these works the glorification of all that we are 
bound to hold supreme in life: health, beauty, 
strength, love. Is not the exaggerated splendour of 
these pictures a triumphant challenge, the expression 
of a magnificent principle? " 

We stood silent for a moment ; then I added : 

" We never actually realise all that we have in 
our minds; but one would think that this man's life 
and work reached the farthest bounds of his visions. 



Or else we are unable even to catch a glimpse of what 
he saw." 

And, musing upon that mystery, our frail femi- 
nine imagination seemed to us like a landscape fad- 
ing into the mist: when the day is clear, we can 
distinguish the chain of blue mountains whose sum- 
mits touch the sky, but our imagination, if it would 
not be lost in the haze, must keep to the foreground, 
in the avenues laid out by man. 

I resumed: 

" We are very far, Rose, from the parsimony of 
the Primitives, each of whose works contains almost 
a human life. In their room and in this, you will 
find all the contradictory and complementary instruc- 
tion which one would like to give you. Over there, 
sobriety, patience, assiduous effort, absolute con- 
scientiousness in the smallest detail ; life bowed in all 
humility, but yet steadfast and fervent; imagina- 
tion and beauty that do not strive to shine: if you 
want a proof, look at the great number that remained 
anonymous ! Here, on the contrary, prodigality, ex- 
ultant love, blood coursing triumphantly through 
conquered veins. Rubens is the apostle of whole- 
hearted happiness. The biggest things seem easy 
when you are in his presence. If ever you feel tired 



♦ 193 * 

and ready to be discouraged, you should come and 
look at him. Oh, I wonder, yes, I wonder to what, to 
whom I owe this new enthusiasm? What have I seen, 
what have I learnt ? Through what chance acquaint- 
ance, what casual word, what gesture or action, 
doubtless far removed from Rubens and his works, 
did I suddenly enter into that wonderful kingdom? " 

And, in fact, that is how it had happened. An 
unknown treasure falls into the cup of emotion ; and 
the level is raised. Oh, to feel the long-slumbering 
sensation rise within one's self; to see that which 
was obscure to us yesterday become crystal-clear to- 
day ; to love more passionately, to understand a lit- 
tle better, to know a little more: that is, to us 
women, the real progress, the only progress which 
we must desire and seek after ! But how can I hope 
that Rose will progress if she never feels? 



In vain I roamed about with her for an hour, not 
among the pictures, whose value she could not yet 
appreciate, but among the dreams that were born 
of them, among the most moving and delectable vi- 
sions ; vain my emotion, vain my rapture : no answer- 



ing spark lit her indifferent eyes. True, there was no 
question of failure or success ; I was putting nothing 
to the test: that would have been insanity. But 
why this weight of oppression on my spirits? I could 
not get rid of disturbing memories: memories of 
childish raptures finding utterance by chance ; memo- 
ries of those first loves which fasten upon anything 
in their haste to live ; memories of virgin hearts nur- 
tured on dreams ! 

O enthusiasm, admiration, love, if you were not 
at first wanderers, neither seeking nor choosing, if 
you did not blaze fiercely and foolishly like a flame 
burning in the noon-day sun, will you ever be able 
to light the darkness with all the splendours that 
are awaiting your spark in order to burst into 
life? 

O sweet eyes of my Roseline, sweet eyes that shine 
under your soft, fair lashes like two opals set in pure 
gold, will you close for all time without having gazed 
for a moment upon the wonders of the earth, upon 
the real sky of our human life? Is it true that your 
beams extinguish life and beauty wherever they 
rest? 



Chapter VI 



It is six o'clock in the evening; I am taking Rose 
along the boulevards, which are so interesting at this 
time of the year. As usual, I am astonished at every- 
thing that does not astonish her. I look at her as 
she walks, beautiful and impassive; I keep step with 
her stride ; and my thoughts hover to and fro be- 
tween this life of hers which refuses to take form 
and my ideals which are gradually fading out of 
existence. 

Alas, the days pass over her without arousing 
either desire or weariness ! From time to time, I 
suggest some simple, trifling work for her. But, 
whether the task be mental or material, whether the 
duty be light or complex, she acquiesces in the sug- 
gestion only to make it easier for her to put it aside 
later, gently and as a matter of course, like tired arms 
laying down a burden too heavy for them. 

This evening, I am merciful to her indolence. Go- 
ing through the hall of her boarding-house just now, 



4* 196 *§> 

I saw the long table laid, at which the boarders meet. 
And I think of those destinies which have been 
linked with Rose's during the past fortnight, while 
I am still unable to obtain a clear idea of any one 
of them from her involved and incoherent accounts. 

The house, which is in the old-fashioned style, has 
at the back a sort of glass-covered balcony over- 
hanging the garden of the house next door. Here 
the boarders take their coffee after meals, while the 
proprietress, a gentle, amiable creature, strives to 
establish some sort of intimacy among them, to 
create an imaginary family out of these strangers 
who have come from all parts of the world with 
varying objects and for diverse reasons. 

I know from experience the surprises latent in 
people like these. To look at them, one would set 
them down as belonging to stereotyped models: in- 
valids, travellers, globe-trotters, runaways or stu- 
dents, as the case may be. I call up figures from 
my own recollection and describe them to Rose to 
encourage her to tell me her impressions. Stray 
reminiscences marshal themselves, images rise before 
my eyes, obliterating the things and people around 
me, and a vision appears over which my memory 
plays like a reflection in a sheet of water. I see a 



4* 197 *§> 

long house and its white-and-green front mirrored 
in a clear lake. A man and a woman arrive there 
at the same time; and I tell Rose the story of the 
two old wanderers : 

" It was very curious. Imagine those two people 
unknown to each other, leaving the same country 
at about the same age and making the same jour- 
neys in opposite directions. When I met them, they 
were two grey-haired, wizened figures, with the same 
short-sighted eyes blinking behind the same kind of 
spectacles. It amused me from the first to look at 
them as one and united beforehand, at a time when 
they were still unacquainted. I watched them at 
the meals which brought them closer together daily, 
as it were perusing each other with the pleasure of 
finding themselves to be alike, as though they were 
two copies of the same guide-book. In their equally 
commonplace minds, recollections took the place of 
ideas. To them, life was a sort of long classifica- 
tion ; they recognised no other duty but that of tak- 
ing notes and cataloguing. I don't know if they 
saw some advantage one day in uniting for good, 
or if they began at last to think that there are 
other roads to follow in the world beside those which 
lead to lakes, cities, waterfalls and mountains. At 



«§& 198 *§* 

any rate, after a few weeks, they were sharing the 
same room ; and we learnt that in future they meant 
to live side by side." 

" Had they got married? " 

" No. And, though they performed a very natu- 
ral action with the utmost simplicity, this was cert- 
ainly not due to loftiness of soul or breadth of 
mind. But one felt that their knowledge of the 
manners and morals of other civilizations had sim- 
plified their moral outlook, just as their actual 
physical outlook had been dimmed through seeing 
nature under so many aspects." 

Rose began to laugh: 

" There is nothing of that kind at the boarding- 
house," she said. " For the moment, we have no old 
people: nothing but students, two American women, 
a Spanish lady . . ." 

Then she hesitated a little and added: 

u There's an artist, too, an artist who has begun 
to paint my portrait." 

" Your portrait ! And you never told me ? " 

I am interrupted by a violent movement from Rose. 
She has turned round and, in the gathering dusk, 
her whirling umbrella comes down furiously on a 
man's hat, smashing it in and knocking it off his 



head. A gentleman is standing before us, very well- 
dressed and looking very uncomfortable. He stam- 
mers out a vague excuse and tries to escape, but the 
indignant girl addresses him noisily. An alterca- 
tion follows; the loafers stop to listen; a crowd 
gathers round us ; and a policeman hurries towards 
us from the other side of the road. Fortunately, 
an empty cab passes; and I just have time to jump 
in, followed by Rose, who continues to brandish a 
threatening umbrella through the window. 

Then at last I obtain an explanation of the dis- 
turbance. It appears that, without my noticing 
it, the man had been following us for an hour; 
and his silent homage had ended by incensing the 
girl. 

I kiss her at the door of the boarding-house and 
walk back thoughtfully through the streets, re- 
flecting on the surprises which that uncivilised cha- 
racter holds in store for me. 



2 



Rose had perhaps insulted a man who was simply 
taking pleasure in admiring her, I thought to myself. 
What did she know of his intentions? In any case, 



«§* 200 *§•> 

is not a silent look enough to keep importunity at a 
distance ? 

Generally speaking, those who go after us in this 
way because of the swing of our hips, or the mass 
of hair gleaming on our neck, or a shapely shoe un- 
der a lifted skirt, are uninteresting; and among all 
the coarse, silly or timid admirers whom a woman 
can encounter in the street there are perhaps one 
or two at most who will leave an ineffaceable mark 
on her memory. But why not always admit the 
most charitable construction? 



3 



I had been wandering a long time at random. 
Feeling a little tired, I turned into the Pare Monceau, 
at the time when it was too late for the mothers 
and babies and too early for the lovers' invasion. 
I sat down by the transparent lake which so prettily 
reflects its diadem of arbours. A young willow 
drooped in gentle sadness over the face of the water ; 
and white ducks glided past me in the evening mist. 
The waning blue light mingled with the pale vapour 
that rises over Paris at nightfall; and all this made 
a mauve sky behind the dark trees. It was soft and 



4* 201 *§► 

melancholy, but not grave; and I lingered on, amid 
the beauty of the scene, rapt in some woman's re- 
verie. Then a lamp was lighted behind the bench on 
which I sat ; and on the ground before me I saw a 
shadow beside my own. I understood and did not 
turn my head. 

A man had followed me. I felt his eyes resting 
heavily on my profile, on my cheek and on my un- 
gloved hands. He was evidently going to speak. 
Annoyed at this, I took a little volume from 
my pocket and, to protect my solitude, began to 
read. 

But soon I guessed that he was reading with me; 
and my mind thus mingling with a stranger's passed 
over the words without quite following them. His 
persistency angered me ; and I closed the book. 

Then he said to me : 

" Yes, you are very beautiful." 

The words fell into my soul with a disquieting 
resonance. I rose with a flushed face and then hesi- 
tated. It was certainly one of those gross and lying 
pieces of flattery which we all of us hear at times. 
Nevertheless, I resisted the instinctive impulse that 
would have made me move away. Is not modesty in 
such a case merely another stratagem of our co- 



que try? We flee, the man pursues and the wrong im- 
pression is confirmed. 

Standing in front of him, I frankly turned my 
eyes on his. Then he softly repeated the same 
words. 

Was it the exquisite modulation of his voice? Or 
again were the gentle, friendly words the sudden 
revelation of a troubled life, a sensitive soul ready 
to pour itself out in a single phrase and longing 
to crystallise itself in one unparalleled second? 
They surprised me, those words of his, they seemed 
to me new words, grave words, because I had not 
believed that it was possible to speak them in that 
way to a stranger, to speak them in a voice that asked 
for nothing. 

My whole attitude must have betrayed my two- 
fold astonishment. My eyes questioned his. Their 
expression underwent no change. He was really 
asking for nothing. Then I smiled and answered, 
simply : 

" I thank you. A woman is always glad to be told 
that." 

Taking off his hat, he rose and bowed. I moved 
away with a slight feeling of discomfort: would he 
commit the stupidity of following me? Had I made 



^ 203 *t 

a mistake? No, he resumed his seat. He had not 
blundered either. 



When two people do not know each other and 
will not meet again, the words exchanged between 
them, if they are not mere commonplaces, become 
fraught with a strange significance and leave behind 
them a trail of melancholy like a mourning-veil ; it is 
the surprise of those voices which speak to each other 
and will never be heard again, the fleeting encounter 
between glance and glance, the smile which knows not 
where to rest and yet would fain enrich the remem- 
brance with a ray of kindness. 

The essential image of a human life is contained 
in a moment like that. It awakens, hesitates, seeks, 
thinks that it has found, speaks a word and relapses 
into nothingness. 



Chapter VII 
l 

Rose's profile stands out in relief against the dark 
velvet of the box. Her soft, fair hair parts into two 
waves that are like two streams of honey following 
the curve of her cheek. Her long neck is very white 
in the black gown that frames it; and her gloved 
hands rest near the fan that lies opened on her knees 
like a swan's wing. She is sitting straight up, with 
her eyes fixed in front of her. Her attitude is as 
dignified and cold as a circlet of brilliants on a beau- 
tiful forehead. 

I am alone, at the back of the box. I prefer to 
listen like that, in the shadow, unseen. Is not the 
attention of a woman who is anything of a coquette, 
that slight, fitful attention, always affected a little 
by the thought, however unconscious, of the effect 
which she is producing? 



4* 205 *y 
% 

I am struck by the general attitude of reverence. 
In the great silence through which the music swells, 
the lives of all those present seem penetrated with 
harmony. 

I look at them as at so many open temples, which 
their thoughts have deserted in order to join one 
another in an invisible communion. There is a kind 
of homage in the bent heads and lowered eyes of the 
men. The women are silent. The fans cease flut- 
tering. The souls of the audience are uplifted like 
the silent instruments of a human symphony that 
mysteriously rises and rises till it mingles with the 
other and is absorbed in it. If some part of us ex- 
ists beyond words and forms, if our thought some- 
times floats in regions of pure mentality, is it not 
this principle deprived of consciousness which bathes 
in the tremulous waves of sound? 



And Rose is also listening. But Rose listens with- 
out hearing. She, whom the most beautiful things 
leave unmoved, here preserves an appearance of ab- 



«§fr 206 *§► 

solute attention better than any one else in the audi- 
ence. She listens in that passive manner which is 
characteristic of her nature. She lives a waking 
sleep. There is no consciousness, no effort, but 
neither any desire. 

When the orchestra fills the house with a song of 
gladness, I forget my anxiety and let my imagina- 
tion soar into its heights and weave romances around 
that strange, cold beauty; but, if the music stops, 
if Rose moves or speaks, then it comes to earth again 
with some simple little plan, quite practical and quite 
ordinary. 



4 



She leant forward and I saw glittering under the 
electric lamp the little silver chain which she wore 
round her neck on the day when I saw her first, in 
the Normandy cornfields, standing amid the tall 
golden sheaves ; and, as I recalled that first im- 
pression, the difference between then and now came 
like a blinding flash. In the cool morning breeze, 
the sickles advance with the sound and the surge of 
waves; and the golden expanse bows before the on- 
coming death. The sky is blue, the village steeple 



«§* 207 *§> 

shimmers in the sunlight, a great calm reigns . . . 
and a woman stands there, bending over the ground. 
What have I done? What have I done? Was not 
everything better so? 



Chapter VIII 



" It looks like snowing," says Rose. 

The words falling upon an absolute silence dis- 
tract me from my work. 

It is a dull, drab winter's day. There is no co- 
lour, no light in the sky that shows through the 
muslin blinds. On the branches of the bare trees, 
a few dead leaves, which the wind has left behind, 
shiver miserably at some passing gust. There is 
just enough noise for us to enjoy the peace that 
enfolds the house. From time to time, carriage- 
wheels roll by and the crack of a whip cuts into our 
silence ; then the dog wakes, sits up, looks question- 
ingly at me and quietly puts his nose back between 
his paws and begins to snore again. Rose is sit- 
ting opposite him, on the other side of the fire-place. 
She is holding a book in her hands without reading 
it. Her beautiful eyes are staring dreamily at the 
fitful flames. 

I rose and went upstairs to fetch a volume which 



<•§* 209 *> 

I wanted. Both of them, the dog and she, accom- 
panied me, yawning and stretching themselves as 
they went. They stood beside the book-case, like 
two witnesses, equally useless and equally indis- 
pensable, and watched me searching. I shivered in 
the cold room. Rose gave a little cough; and the 
dog tried to curl himself up in the folds of my 
skirt. 

Then we all three went down again; and, when I 
had gone back to my place, they docilely resumed 
theirs on either side of the chimney. 

The dog, before settling down, turned several 
times on his cushion, arching his back, with his tail 
between his legs and his critical nose quivering with 
satisfaction. Rose also has seen that her armchair 
is as comfortable as it can be made. Now, lying 
back luxuriously, with her elbows on the rests and 
her head on a soft cushion, she is evidently not much 
troubled at the thought of a long day indoors. 



2 



In the two months since Rose left Sainte-Colombe, 
I have drilled her into an intermittent attempt at 
style which is the utmost that she will ever achieve, 



I fear; for her will, unhappily, is incapable of sus- 
tained effort. When she has to hold herself up- 
right for several hours at a time, I see her gradu- 
ally stooping as though invisible forces were drag- 
ging her down. 

Certainly, it is no longer the Rose of Sainte- 
Colombe who is here beside me. How much of her 
remains? Her general appearance is transformed 
by her clothes and the way in which she wears her 
hair; her voice and gestures are softer; but all this 
minute and complex change is but the subtle effect 
of events, the disconcerting effect of an influence 
that has laid itself upon her nature without altering 
it in any way. And this is what really causes my un- 
easiness. She is changed, but she has not changed. 

I take her with me wherever I have to go. She 
accompanies me on my walks and drives, in my shop- 
ping, to the play. Men consider her beatuiful, but 
her indifference keeps love at a distance: love, the 
passion in which I placed, in which I still place the 
hopes that remain to me. 



«§( 211 *> 
3 

As for Rose herself, she is always pleased, with- 
out being enthusiastic, and never expresses a wish or 
a desire. 

I sometimes laugh and say: 

" You have a weatherproof soul ; and your com- 
mon sense is as starched as your Sunday cap used 
to be ! " 

But at heart she saddens me. To keep my inter- 
est in her alive, I find myself wishing that she had 
some glaring fault. And at the same time I am 
angry with myself for not appreciating the exclu- 
siveness of her affection better. I am actually be- 
ginning to think that this extravagant sentiment is 
fatal to her. I look upon it in her heart as I look 
upon the great tree in my garden, which interferes 
with the growth of everything around it : fond as I 
am of that tree, I consider it something of an enemy. 



Chapter IX 



THIS afternoon, the whole atmosphere of the house 
is changed. There is no silence, no work. The maid 
fusses about, spreading out my dresses before Rose 
and me. We cannot settle upon anything. 

" We shall have to try them on you," I say. 

But at the very first our choice is made. 

A cry of admiration escapes me at the sight of 
Rose sheathed from head to foot in a long green- 
velvet tunic that falls heavily around her, without 
ornament or jewellery. From the high velvet collar, 
her head rises like a flower from its calyx; and I 
have never beheld a richer harmony than that of her 
golden hair streaming over the emerald green. 

While I finish dressing her, we talk : 

" You are having all your friends," she says. 

" Some of them, those who live in Paris at this 
season. I have done for you to-day what I seldom 
care to do: I have asked them all together. But I 



& 213 *> 

have made a point of insisting that the strictest 
isolation shall be maintained." 

Rose laughed as she asked me what I meant. 

" It's quite simple," I answered. " We shall throw 
open all the doors ; and there will be no crowding 
permitted ! No general conversation, no loud talk- 
ing . . ." 

" In short," she exclaimed, " the exact opposite 
to the convent, w T here we were forbidden to talk in 
twos." 

" That is to say, where you were forbidden to talk 
at all ; for there is no real conversation with more 
than one. As long as you have not spoken to a 
person alone, can you say that you have ever seen 
her? " 

She did not appear convinced; and I continued: 

"But just think! Conversation in pairs, when 
two people are in sympathy — and they are nearly 
always in sympathy when they are face to face — 
can be as sincere as lonely meditations." 

I felt that she shared my sentiment ; but her rea- 
sonable nature makes her always steer a middle 
course, never leaning to either side. 



4* 214 *§•> 

The pale winter sun is beginning to wane, but 
there is still plenty of daylight in the white draw- 
ing-room. And I look at my friends, who have 
formed little groups in harmony with my wishes and 
their own. When an increased intimacy brings us 
all closer together, the party will gain by that earlier 
informality. Each life will have been given its 
normal pitch and will try at least to keep it. For 
our souls are such sensitive instruments that they 
can rarely strike as much as a true third. 

Blanche, with the agate eyes and the cloud of 
chestnut hair, is a picture of autumn in the brown 
and red of her frock, with its bands of sable. She 
is listening attentively to Marcienne. The fair 
Marcienne herself, whom I love for her passionate 
pride, is sitting near the fire-place; and her wonder- 
ful profile stands out against the flames. Her mouth 
is a fierce red; but the figure which shows through 
the pale-coloured tailor-made dress is full of tender 
childish curves. The swansdown toque makes her 
black hair seem blacker still. She is talking seri- 
ously and holding out to the flames her fingers 
covered with rings. 



4* 215 & 

The wide-open door reveals the darker bedroom, 
in which the lights are already turned on. A young 
married woman is sitting with her elbows on the 
table. She is reading a poem in a low voice ; and 
from time to time a few words, spoken more loudly, 
mingle with the semi-silence of the other rooms. 
Bending under the lamp-shade, her brown hair is 
bathed in the light, while her profile is veiled by her 
hand and the lines of her body are lost in the dark 
dress which melts into the shadow. Near her, lean- 
ing against the white wall, two white figures listen 
and dream. 

I see Rose. She is standing, all emerald and gold, 
in the middle of the next room. Behind her, a 
mirror reflects the copper candelabra whose lighted 
•branches surround her with stars. A placidly-smiling 
Madonna, chaste and cold, dazzling and glorious, 
she talks to the inseparables, Aurelie and Renee. 

Renee, clad in deep mourning, is a delicious little 
princess of jet, with lint-white hair and flax-blue 
irises. Her companion, crowned with glowing tresses, 
knows the splendour of her green eyes and, with a 
cunning fan-like play of her long eyelids, amuses 
herself by making them appear and disappear. 

My attention is recalled to the visitor by my side, 



«|* 216 *§► 

a young Dutchwoman not yet quite at home in 
France. She is shy in speaking and she does not 
know my friends. I look at her. Her fair round 
face is quaintly framed in the smooth coils of her 
golden hair. Her eyes are a cloudless blue. Her 
nose, which is a little heavy and serious, belies the 
smiling mouth, with its corners that turn up so read- 
ily. The very long and very lovely neck makes one 
follow in thought the hollow of the nape and the slope 
of the shoulders vanishing in a snowy cloud of 
Mechlin lace. On the deliberately antiquated black- 
silk dress, a gold chain and a miniature set in bril- 
liants give the finishing touch to a style classic in 
its chastity. Seated in a grandfather's chair in the 
embrasure of the window, she reminds one of Mme. 
de Mortsauf in Balzac's Lys dans la vallee. 

But she is also the very embodiment of Zealand. 
You can picture her head covered with a lace cap 
and her temples adorned with gold corkscrews. Be- 
hind her you conjure up flat horizons, slow-turning 
wind-mills, little red-and-green houses in which the 
inmates seem to play at living. How charming she 
looks in the last rays of light, at once childish and 
dignified, passive and romantic . . . and so differ- 
ent from the rest! 



4* 217 & 

But has not each her particular interest, her spe- 
cial grace? When my eyes go from one to an- 
other, they tell a rosary of precious beads, each with 
its own peculiar beauty, neither greater nor less than 
its fellows ! What a glad and wondrous thing it is 
to be women, to be delicate, pretty things, infinitely 
sensitive and infinitely varied, living works of art, 
matter for kisses, the realised stuff of dreams ! When 
you look at them like that, solely in the decorative 
sense, you are ready to condemn those who work, 
who think and who concentrate upon an aim of some 
sort, for these superfine creatures carry the reason 
for their existence within themselves, so great is 
the perfection which they achieve with a gesture, 
an attitude, a glance. And then you reflect upon 
what they too often are in the privacy of their lives : 
narrow and domineering, attached to petty, useless 
duties, their minds lacking dignity, their souls lack- 
ing horizon; and you are sorry that they have not 
grown, through the sheer consciousness of their 
beauty, into ways that are kindly and generous. 

I let my hand rest lightly on Cecilia's hands ; and 
in the sweetness of the gathering dusk we both dream. 
Like the scent of flowers, the different natures seem 
to find a more precise expression as their shapes 



«§* 218 & 

fade. I explain them to Cecilia, who does not know 
them. 

Aurelie and Renee draw my eyes with their laugh- 
ter; and I begin with them. They are the careless 
lovers, idle for the exquisite pleasure of idleness. 
They live a dream-life, the life of a child that sleeps, 
dresses itself, goes for a walk, eats sweets and plays 
with its dolls. They are good-natured as well as 
frivolous, lissom of mind as well as of body, indulgent 
to others and charming in themselves. Love, rest- 
ing on their young and tender lives, makes them more 
tender yet, like the light that lingers long and fondly 
upon a soft-tinted pastel. 

Next comes the turn of Marcienne, who, greatly 
daring, has broken with her family and given up 
worldly luxury, to work and live freely with the man 
of her choice. 

Beside her is Blanche, still restless and undecided, 
attracted by love and irritated by her sister Her- 
mione, who pursues a vision of charity and re- 
demption. 

Here my friend's fine profile turns to the other 
groups ; and I continue : 

" The one whom we call Sister Hermione you 
can see in the dark bedroom, reading under the 



4* 219 * 

light of the lamp, with her face hidden in her 
hands." 

" Is she good-looking? " 

" Very, but tries not to seem so. That is why 
she is always so simply dressed." 

Cecilia interrupts me: 

" But her dress isn't simple ! " 

" You are quite right. It is made complex by a 
thousand superfluous fripperies. Hermione has not 
been slow to understand that, to counteract perfect 
beauty, you must read simplicity to mean common- 
place triviality." 

A flutter of silk, a gleam of a silver-white skirt 
in the waning light, a whiff of orris-root ; and Mar- 
cienne glides down to our feet with a lithe, cat-like 
movement. In a curt, passionate tone, she says: 

" You are speaking of Hermione. Oh, do try and 
persuade her sister not to go the same way: is not 
one enough? Must more loveliness be wasted?" 

Sitting on a cushion on the floor, she raises her 
glowing face, her eyes dark as night, her scarlet 
mouth, her dazzling pallor. 

" I shall do nothing of the sort," I answer with 
a laugh, " for I rather like Hermione's folly ; be- 
sides, her reason will soon conquer it ! The dangers 



<& 220 ^ 

we run depend on chance; the first roads we take 
depend on influences. The way in which we bear 
those dangers and return from those roads: that is 
where the interest begins ! " 

" But, tell me," murmurs Cecilia, " what does your 
Hermione want ? " 

" Here is her story, in a couple of words," says Mar- 
cienne. " She is rich, beautiful and talented ; and she 
belongs to an aristocratic English family. At 
twenty, she yielded to an impulse and went on the 
stage; in a few months, she was a really successful 
actress ; then she made the acquaintance of a Hindu 
high-priest. He came and went; and she followed 
him. During the last two years, she has been his 
faithful disciple." 

" But what does she preach ? " 

Marcienne made a vague gesture: 

" Buddhist doctrines ! She believes that she pos- 
sesses the true faith and tries to hand it on to others. 
In the few days which she has spent in Paris, 
she has already made two converts, those two inno- 
cents who are hanging on her words. It would all 
be charming, you know, if her creed did not enjoin 
chastity and if, by holding those views, she did not 
risk the awful fate of never knowing love ! " 



4* 221 *> 

Marcienne continued, still addressing herself to 
my new friend: 

" Do you see those pretty creatures in white, 
standing close to Hermione? They are two orphans, 
two girls who fell in love with the same man. I don't 
know the details of the romance, nor can I say 
whether it was fancy or passion that guided the 
man's choice. All I know is that he loved one of 
them and had a child by her. A little while after, 
he deserted her. Thereupon their unhappy love re- 
united those two hearts which happy love, as always, 
had divided. The same devotion and kindness made 
them both bend over the one cradle. Oh, the ador- 
able pity that prompted Anne's heart on the day 
when, hearing her baby call her mamma for the first 
time, she sent for her sister Marie and, holding to- 
wards her those little outstretched arms, those eyes 
in which consciousness was dawning, that little flut- 
tering life seeking a resting-place, she offered the 
maid, in the exquisite mystery of that first smile, 
the first name of love ! From that time onward, the 
baby grew up between its two mammas as one treads 
a sunny path between two flowering banks." 

Marcienne had a gift for pretty phrases of this 
kind, which she would let fall not without a certain 



4* 222 *§* 

affectation. She liked talking and I liked listening 
to her. I asked her what she thought of Rose, She 
praised her beauty highly and even said the occa- 
sional awkwardness of her movements made it more 
uncommon : 

" For that matter," she added, " if it were not so, 
I should try to be blind to it. A woman must un- 
derstand that she lowers herself by belittling her 
sisters. How immensely we increase man's ascend- 
ancy by never praising one another ! " 

I began to laugh : 

" Alas, I would not dare to say that the wisest 
among us, in extolling our own sex, are not once 
more seeking the admiration of some man ! " 

And Marcienne, who has been to such pains to re- 
lease herself from the worldly surroundings amid 
which she suffered, goes on speaking long and pas- 
sionately. There is a note of pain in her voice as 
she says : 

" Everything separates us and removes us one from 
the other, education even more than instinct. If 
woman only knew how she lessens her power by 
blindly respecting the petty social laws of which she 
is nevertheless the sole judge and dictator! Whereas 
she hands them down meekly, from mother to daugh- 



«§* 223 *§► 

ter, with all their wearisome restrictions, and grows 
indignant if some one bolder ventures to transgress 
them. And yet it is in this domain, which is hers, 
that she might extend her power by gradually over- 
throwing the old idols." 

And she also says : 

" Almost always, in defending a woman, we have 
occasion to strike a mortal blow at some ancient 
prejudice. For my part, I must confess that I take 
a mischievous delight in bestowing special indulgence 
on things which often are too severe a test for that 
indulgence in others ; for, rather than be suspected 
of impugning ever so lightly some worn-out prin- 
ciple, they will wound and wound again the most 
innocent of their sisters. 



It is almost dark. I leave my companions in order 
to call for the lamps and I stop near Rose as I pass 
through the next room. Here, all the girls are clust- 
ered round Hermione, who is telling them a story 
of her travels. 

Anne and Marie are listening respectfully, while 
the two inseparables, only half-attentive, are sharing 
a box of sweets. 



<& 224 *§•> 

Roseline throws her arms round me and, shrugging 
her shoulders, says: 

" All this strikes me as such utter nonsense ! " 
She is certainly right, with her Normandy com- 
mon sense; but does she not need just a touch of 
this same nonsense to bring her faculties into play, 
her powers into action? 



4 



When I return to the drawing-room, Blanche calls 
me with a laugh of delight: 

" Oh, look ! " she cries. " I've found a book with a 
portrait of my beloved Elizabeth Browning. Look 
at that sweet, gentle face, surrounded with ringlets : 
it's just as I imagined her. I love her all the bet- 
ter now." 

They had opened other books written by women 
and, leaning over the table, were comparing the front- 
ispiece portraits of the authors, interesting or hand- 
some, grave or smiling, young or old. Even so do 
certain little volumes of the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries open nearly always with an engra- 
ving faded by time and representing charming faces 
all of the same class and often with similar expres- 



4* 225 *§•> 

sions and features: a delicate nose, a bow-shaped, 
smiling mouth, intelligent eyes with no mysterious 
depths, dimpled cheeks, a string of pearls round the 
neck, a loosely-tied kerchief just revealing a swelling 
bosom, wanton curls dancing against a dark back- 
ground in a frame of roses upheld by Cupids. And 
the quiver and the arrows and the flying ribbons and 
the turtle-doves: all this, joined to the letters, the 
maxims or the verses, often grave or even sad, some- 
times calm and reasonable, sometimes passionate, 
brings before us in a few strokes the harmonious 
picture of woman's life. 

" It is no longer the fashion in these days," mur- 
mured Blanche. " And } T et is there not an intimate 
relation between a woman's work and her appear- 
ance ? " 

" That is the reason, no doubt," replied Marcienne, 
" why it seems, unlike man's, to grow smaller as it 
passes out of the present. We see the immortal 
pages disappear like the fallen petals of a flower. 
It's sad, don't you think?" 

Struck with the beauty of her closing words, we 
listened to her in silence. She continued to turn 
the leaves at random and resumed : 

" But, oh, the exquisite art which a woman's work 



«§* 226 oil- 
can show when she is not only beautiful, but truly 
wise, when a lovely hand indites stately verse, when 
a life holds or breathes nothing but high romance 
. . . and love ! For it is love and love alone that 
makes a woman's brain conceive." 

Cecilia, who was gradually losing her shyness, 
made a gesture to silence us and said, slowly: 

" I'll tell you something ! " 

A general peal of laughter greeted this phrase 
with which the young Dutchwoman, according to the 
custom of her country, always ushers in her least 
words. To make yourself better understood by slow 
and absent minds, is it not well to give a warning? 
It is a sort of little spring that goes off first and 
arouses people's attention. Then the thought is 
there, ready for utterance. And sometimes, amid 
the silence, an announcement is made that it will be 
fine to-morrow, or that it is hot and that a storm 
is threatening. 

But Cecilia is much too clever to cast aside those 
little mannerisms of her native race which so charm- 
ingly accentuate her special type of beauty. So she 
joined in our laughter with a good grace and, after 
repeating her warning, observed, in her hesitating 
language, that, by thus admitting ourselves to be the 



4* 227 *§* 

mere creatures of love, we were justifying the opinion 
of the men who treat us as " looking-glasses." 

"Looking-glasses? Men's looking-glasses? And 
why not?" I exclaimed. "It is not for us women 
to decry that looking-glass side of us. It is serious, 
more serious than you think, for on the beauty of 
our reflection often depend our ardour, our courage, 
our very character and all the energies that create 
or affect our actions. Besides, whether men or 
women, we can only reflect one another and we our- 
selves do not become conscious of our powers until 
the day of the supreme love, as if, till then, .we had 
only seen ourselves in pocket-mirrors which never 
reflect more than a morsel of our lives, a movement, 
a gesture . . . and which always distort it ! " 

Every mouth quivered with laughter. I insisted : 

" If women often have so much difficulty in learn- 
ing to know their own characters, it is because most 
men are scornful mirrors, occupied with nothing 
smaller than the universe and never dreaming of re- 
flecting women except in a grudging and imperfect 
fashion." 

" It is true," said Marcienne, thinking of her lover, 
a man whose domineering temper often made him un- 
just to her. " Men's lives would be less serenely 



4* 228 *§•> 

confident if our amiable and accommodating souls 
did not afford them a vision incessantly embellished 
by love . . . and always having infinity for a back- 
ground I " 

And, with a satirical smile, she added: 
" Let us accept the part of looking-glasses, but 
let us place our gods in a still higher light! They 
will not complain ; and we shall at least have the ad- 
vantage of seeing beyond them a little space and 
brightness." 

The conversation then assumed a more personal 
character, each of us thinking of the well-beloved: 
Marcienne, ever mournful and passionate; the gen- 
tle Blanche, anxious, secretly plighted to an absent 
lover; and Cecilia, all absorbed in her young happi- 
ness with the husband of her choice. 



Hermione and her cluster of girls had gradually 
come nearer. She dresses badly, she does her hair 
with uncompromising severity, but, in spite of it all, 
Hermione is very beautiful; and her loveliness tri- 
umphs over her commonplace clothes, even as her gen- 
erous heart and the noble restlessness of her mind 



& 229 ^ 

keep her on a plane which is loftier than the narrow 
dogmas of her creed. 

During a moment's silence, I hear her answer a 
question put by Rose : 

" Oh, what does it matter if I am wrong, as long 
as I make others happy ! " 

And all my friends, like a sheaf of glowing flow- 
ers, seemed to be bound together by that word of 
loving-kindness. Were they not all, these bestowers 
of joy, living in a world into which neither sin nor 
error entered, their lives obeying the same eternal 
principles of love, following the sacred law of na- 
ture which fills our hearts with tenderness and our 
bodies with longing? 



6 



They were now able to talk together. Their re- 
marks would not be vain, ordinary or frivolous. 
During the first moments of isolation, each of them 
had pursued her own thoughts and continued her 
own life. Each had reached that perfect diapason 
at which the most antagonistic spirits are in supreme 
unison. Heedless of different objects or of diverse 
aims, the same yearning for generosity, the same 



«§* 230 si- 
thirst after graciousness and beauty united their 
hearts; and their minds, leaping all barriers, came 
to an understanding of* one another in a region 
beyond opinions. All these young and beautiful 
creatures, all these forms fashioned for delight ex- 
haled an atmosphere of love. Were they not all 
alike its votaries? 

One alone, in a fiercer glow of enthusiasm and 
with a doubtless finer sensualism, one alone attempts 
to oifer up her life to a God! The glorious folly 
of her! How I love to see her, vainly tormenting 
her beauty, seeking infinity, aspiring to bear peace 
across the world. I see her soul like a walled garden 
in which all the flowers lift themselves higher and 
higher, struggling to offer themselves to a moment 
of light. But, in a day of greater discontent and in 
an hour of maturity, the illusory fence will fall and 
the fair life will stand in open space. Then, drunk 
with boundless earth and boundless sky, the woman, 
restored to nature, will doubtless find herself more 
attuned to pleasure than were the others and more 
responsive to joy. 

I looked at all those bowed heads, dark or fair, 
dusky or golden, those lovely forms revealed by their 
clinging robes, those delicate profiles bent over the 



<•§* 231 ^ 

portraits and writings of their sisters, far-off friends, 
vanished, unknown or absent, whose power of love 
still lives for all men and for all time . . . immortal 
tears, petals dropped from the flower. 

Then my glistening eyes turned towards my Rose- 
line. She was there, indifferent, unmoved, perhaps 
secretly bored. 

And my thoughts wept in my heart. 

The most beautiful things cannot be given. 



Chapter X 



I HAD been out of town for a time. Returning to 
Paris a day sooner than I intended, I wished to 
give Rose the pleasure of an unexpected arrival and 
I went to see her that same evening. Though it was 
not more than ten o'clock, the lights were already 
out in the strictly-managed boarding-house. There 
was a row of brass candlesticks on the hall-table. 
The man-servant wanted to give me one; but I was 
impatient, thanked him hurriedly and ran upstairs 
in the dark. 

I could not have told why I was so happy; for, 
though I should not have been willing to confess 
it, I had long lost all my illusions about the girl. 
But she was so beautiful; and her passive tempera- 
ment left so much room for my fancy! I never 
made any headway; but at the moment it always 
seemed to me as if I were heard and understood. I 
used to write on that unresisting life as one writes 



4* 233 *§► 

on the sand; and, the easier I found it to make 
the impress of my will, the faster was it obliter- 
ated. 

When I reached the floor on which Rose's bed- 
room was, I stopped in the dark passage. A narrow 
streak of light showed me that her door was not 
quite shut. Then, gathering up my skirts to deaden 
their sound, I felt along the wall and crept softly, 
on tip-toe, so as to take her by surprise. With in- 
finite precautions, I slowly pushed the door open. I 
first caught sight of a corner of the empty bed, with 
its white curtains still closed; then of a candle-end 
burning on the table and of flowers and a broken 
vase lying on the ground. What could she be 
doing? 

I was so far from imagining the truth that I do 
not know how I beheld it without betraying my pre- 
sence by a movement or a sound. There was a young 
man in the room. 

I saw his face, straight opposite me, near the gut- 
tering candle. A man in Rose's bedroom ! A friend, 
no doubt ; a lover, perhaps ! But why had she never 
mentioned him to me? I had been away a month; 
and in not one of her letters had she ever spoken 
of him. A friend? A lover? Could she have a 



whole existence of which I knew nothing? Could her 
quiet life be feigned? But why? 

At the risk of revealing my presence, I opened 
the door still farther; and then I saw her profile 
bending forward. Thus posed, it stood out against 
the black marble of the mantel-piece like a cameo. 
Rose had let down her hair, as she did every even- 
ing. Her bodice was unfastened ; and the two golden 
tresses brought forward over her breast meekly fol- 
lowed the curve of her half-exposed bosom. She was 
not astonished, she was not even excited. She seemed 
to acquiesce in the man's presence in her room; it was 
no doubt customary. 

And suddenly, amid the thousand details that en- 
gaged my attention, a light flashed across me: was 
not Rose's companion one of the boarders in the 
house, perhaps that painter of whom she had told 
me, the one who made a sketch of her head which 
she brought to me a few days after her arrival in 
Paris ? 

His eyes never left her. He watched and followed 
her every movement, whereas she, in her perfect com- 
posure, did not seem even to heed his presence. And 
that was what struck me : Rose's impassiveness in the 
face of that anxious and silent prayer. Did she not 



4* 235 *§•> 

see? Could she not understand? I almost longed 
to rush at her and cry: 

" But look, open your eyes ; that man is entreat- 
ing you ! ... If you do not share his emotions, at 
least be touched by his suffering; if not your lips, 
give him a glance or a smile ! " 

Oh, how like her it all is ! And how the anxious 
pleading of the wooer resembles the vain waiting of 
the friend ! But, alas, what in my case is but a dis- 
appointment of the heart, a tiresome obstacle to the 
evolution of an idea, is perhaps in his case a cruel 
and lasting ordeal ! 

Suddenly, he falls on his knees before the girl. 
With his shaking hands, he touches her breast ; then 
he kisses it gently. She does not repel him, but her 
bored and absent expression discourages any amorous 
action and withers the kisses at the very moment 
when they alight upon her flesh. Then he half- 
raises himself to gaze at her from head to foot; 
and with all his ardour he silently asks for the 
consenting smile and the word that gives permis- 
sion. 

I shall never forget his look, the superb animal 
look, brilliant, glowing and empty as a ball-room de- 
serted by the dancers, the superb, outspoken look 



«§* 236 *§> 

that accompanies the gift of life and seems to flee 
its mystery at the moment when it approaches. 

He stammered a few tender words. His voice 
thrilled me. It was grave and clear as a bronze and 
silver bell. It rang true, for the most ephemeral 
desire is not false. I knew, by the sense of his words, 
that Rose had not yet given herself. 

Sullenly and as though annoyed by the soft words, 
she brought the dark stuff of her bodice over her 
white bosom. To the young man it was like a cloud 
passing over the sky ; and, whether or not because the 
girl's resistance exasperated him, he suddenly pressed 
her to him, sought her lips and made her bend for a 
moment under the violence of his embrace. But, with 
an abrupt movement, with a sort of vindictive rage, 
she succeeded in releasing herself. 

Then I fled from the house. 



2 



I did not recover myself until I was on the quay 
outside and felt the cold night-air against my face. 
My skirt was trailing on the ground ; my hands made 
no movement to hold it up. 

With my disgust and resentment there was min- 



«§* 237 *§* 

gled a vague feeling of remorse. Was it not I who 
had taught the girl the shamelessness that admits 
desire and the prudence that refuses to submit to 
it? Had I not wished for her, above all other treas- 
ures, the power of judging, appreciating, choosing? 

Yes, but when I had talked of choosing, I had 
never imagined that the choice could be made in cold 
blood ! So far from that, it had seemed to me that 
no more dangerous or painful experience could visit 
a woman's heart. The victory of mind over instinct 
and of will over desire is the price of a hideous, 
abnormal struggle opposed to the very law of our 
nature. A sad victory baptised with tears, a sacred 
preparation for the noble defeat that is to crown 
a woman's life! 

Besides, it was not her refusal that revolted me, 
for we cannot judge an action of which we do not 
know the reasons ; it was her demeanour, her horri- 
ble indifference. The ugliness of the scene would not 
have offended me, I reflected, if the woman had been 
in any way troubled by it; if I had seen her resist 
her own desire or at least deplore that which she was 
unable to share; if I had seen her struggle for a 
sentiment or suffer for an idea, however absurd or 
wild ! But Rose had had neither tears nor compas- 



«§* 238 vi- 
sion; and the blind instinct that always prompts us 
to give our lives had not tempted her. 

I continued to see that face of marble. I heard 
those impassive words. I pictured that body which 
felt no thrill, that mouth which abandoned itself with- 
out giving itself. No, I had never taught her any- 
thing of that kind ; for, however light the pain which 
we cause and whatever its nature, we are forgiven 
only if our own heart feels a deeper wound. I did 
not understand her conduct. What had prompted 
it ? To what chains of weakness had her soul stealth- 
ily attached itself, that soul which I had jealously 
protected against all principles and prejudices? 
What secret limits had she assigned herself despite 
my watchful care to give her none? 

I felt grieved and disappointed ; and yet . . . and 
yet I walked along with a certain gladness in my step. 
The tears trembling on my lashes were not tears 
of helplessness, but of a too-insistent energy, for they 
came above all from my overwrought nerves. My 
mind saw clear and rent my remorse like a superflu- 
ous veil. 

No, I was not responsible! Our thought, once 
expressed, no longer belongs to us. Whether it leave 
us when scarce ripe, because an accident has ga- 



<•§* 239 €> 

thered it, or whether it fall in its season, like the leaf 
falling from the tree, we know nothing of what it 
will become; and it is at once the wretchedness and 
the greatness of human thought to be subjected to 
the infinite forms of every mind and of every ex- 
istence. 

I walked for a long time without heeding the hour. 
The sky was clear and the stars glowed in its depths 
like live things ; in the distance, the Trocadero decked 
the night with brilliants. 

And, little by little, hope returned to me. I was 
persuaded that over there, in the little room which 
my care had provided for Rose, love would yet be 
the conqueror. She would awaken under those kisses. 
My Roseline should yet know passion and rapture. 
Love would triumph. It would do what I had been 
unable to do, it would breathe life into beauty ! And, 
in the dead stillness, I kept hearing the kisses falling, 
falling heavily, like the first drops of a storm. 



Chapter XI 



We are talking like old friends, he and I, in the 
little white bedroom. Through the two curtains of 
the window high up in the wall a great ray of sun- 
shine falls, a column of dancing light that dies on 
the table between us. I sit drumming absent-mind- 
edly with my fingers in the shimmering motes. He 
looks at me and I feel no need to speak or to turn 
my head. The novelty of his presence makes no 
impression on me beyond a feeling of surprise that 
I do not find it strange. When by chance we do not 
hold the same view, the difference of opinion lasts 
only long enough to shift the thought which we are 
considering, even as one shifts an object to see its 
different aspects one after the other. 

I came to the boarding-house this morning to see 
Rose. Her room was empty. I was on the point 
of going, when the young man passed. He recog- 
nised me, doubtless from the portraits which Rose 
had shown him; and he came up to me of his own 



<& 241 *§•> 

accord. His greeting was frank and natural. There 
were breadth and spaciousness in his eyes and his 
smile as well as in his manner. To justify my 
friendly interest, I pretended to have heard about 
him from Rose as he himself had heard about me: 
that is to say, with the most circumstantial details 
regarding position, occupations and all the exter- 
nals of life. He did not therefore enter into explana- 
tions about things of which I was ignorant and we 
at once began to talk without any formality. 

What a strange and delightful sensation it was ! 
I remembered all that I had noticed about him the 
night before ; I knew his character from admiring its 
gentleness and patience under the supreme test of 
unrequited love, of desire that awakened no response. 
And he was now talking to me from the very depths 
of his soul, while I knew nothing of who or what 
he was, nor of what he was doing here. I was really 
seeing him from the inside, as we see ourselves 
behind the scenes of our own existence, without 
ever knowing exactly the spectacle which we pre- 
sent to others. I was observing the inner work- 
ing of his life before I had seen the outward pre- 
sentment. 

Speaking to me of his profession, he told me, with 



<& 24,2 *§•> 

a smile, how little importance he attached to his 
painting : 

" It is only a favourable pretext for the life I have 
chosen. As you know, my greatest passion is na- 
ture; and I cannot but like the work which trained 
my eyes to a clearer vision and my nerves to a finer 
response." 

He told me of the years which he had wasted in 
seeking in the customary amusements the joys which 
are ordinarily found there. He told me of the life 
of luxury and idleness which he had led until the day 
came when adverse fate reduced him to living on the 
income from a small estate which he owned in the 
country: a thrice-fortunate day, he added, for from 
that moment he had understood that he was made for 
solitude, meditation and all the quiet pleasures of 
nature. Then he enthusiastically described to me the 
peaceful charm of his little house and he employed 
the words of a lover to extol the charm of his willow- 
swept river and the wonders of his flowers and bees. 



Then I wanted to know what he thought of Rose. 
He judged her not inaccurately; but, with a lover's 



4* 243 *§> 

partiality', he applied the words balance, gentleness, 
equanimity to qualities which one day, when the scales 
had fallen from his eyes, he would call lack of heart 
and feeling. Deep-seated differences, perhaps, but 
yet not of a nature to affect the very sound princi- 
ples that ensured his tranquillity. 

He had no illusions as to the quality of her mind. 
But to him, as to most men, a woman's intellectual 
value was but a relative factor ; and he did not pause 
to estimate it with any attempt at accuracy, prefer- 
ring to repeat: 

" She will not disturb the silence of my life ; and 
her beauty will adorn it marvellously." 

He had a way of speaking which I liked. He knew 
how to refine his words by means of his expression. 
If they were very positive, his voice would hesitate ; 
if too grave, a faint smile would lighten their som- 
breness. If he spoke ironically, his boyish eyes soft- 
ened any touch of bitterness in the wisdom of the 
satirist. 

I did not like to think that the success of his woo- 
ing would mean the end of his labours. Rose would 
never become the independent, perfect woman of my 
dreams, capable of preserving her personal life in 
the midst of love and in all circumstances. Alas, 



my ambition had soared too high! Henceforth, I 
must wish nothing better for her than this purely 
ornamental fate. 

" Do you love her? " I asked. 

" I was taken captive at once by her beauty," he 
answered. " She objected that this sudden love must 
be an illusion; and I tried for a time to think the 
same. But, before long, suffering taught me the sin- 
cerity of my love. I dare not say whether it is sense- 
less or right or usual ; but, as long as a feeling gives 
us nothing but joy, we are unable to recognise it, 
we doubt it, we smile at it as a light and fleeting 
thing. Let anguish come, however, with tears and 
dread; and it is as though the seal of reality were 
placed on our heart. Then we believe in our love." 

I repeated, pensively and happily : 

" Do you really love her ? " 

" Yes, I can say so honestly." 

He hesitated a little and, speaking very slowly, 
as though picking his words from amid his memories, 
said: 

" When we are sincere, we are bound to confess 
that the love which encircles all the movements of our 
body follows the movements of its strength or its 
weakness equally. It has its hours of exasperation, 



«1* 245 *§> 

it is sometimes a tide that rises and floods everything: 
the past, the present, the future, the will, the spirit, 
the flesh. Then all becomes peaceful ; the waves sub- 
side and we think that we love no more. We do love, 
however, but with a more detached joy. We have 
stepped outside love, as it were, and we contemplate 
its extent." 

My breath came quickly and my hands, clasped 
on the table, were pressed close together. My heart 
was bursting with gladness for my Roseline. He saw 
my emotion and questioned me with deeper interest. 

I replied without hesitation : 

" I am happy in this love which comes to Rose so 
simply and candidly." 

He pressed my hand as he said : 

" Sometimes, on reading certain passages in your 
letters, I used to fear that you might be opposed 
to my intentions. . . ." 

I began to laugh : 

" Yes, you will have read fine views concerning in- 
dependence; and a tirade against the women who 
surrender too easily ; and any number of things more 
or less contrary to your hopes. But do you not 
agree with me that our principles are at their sound- 
est when they are least rigid and that our noblest 



«§* 246 & 

convictions are those of which we see both sides at 
once? Woman even more than man must not be 
afraid of handling her morality a little roughly when 
occasion demands it, just as she sometimes ruffles her 
laces for the pleasure of the eyes, easily and natu- 
rally and without attaching too much importance to 
the matter." 



He listens to my words as I listen to his, with sur- 
prised delight. We feel as if we were playing with 
the same thought, for it flashes from one life to the 
other without undergoing any alteration. 

In point of fact, the human beings whom we see 
for the first time are not always new to us. True, 
we have never seen each other before, but our sym- 
pathies, our enthusiasms, inasmuch as they are com- 
mon to both of us, have met more than once ; and, now 
that we are talking, the form of our thoughts also 
corresponds, for, without intending it, we often look 
at the most abstract things objectively, because he 
is a painter and I a woman. 

Oh, I know no more exquisite surprises than those 
chance meetings which suddenly bring you a friend 



4* 247 *§► 

at a turning in life's road! It is like a charming 
landscape which one has seen in a dream and which 
one now finds in reality, without even having hoped 
for it. You speak, laugh, recognise each other and 
above all you are astonished and go on being aston- 
ished, adorably and shamelessly, like children. 

What we had to say was all interwoven, as though 
we were both drawing on the same memories. We 
were speaking of those friends of a day whom acci- 
dent sometimes gives us and whom the very brief- 
ness of the emotion impresses deeply on our heart. 
They are there for ever, in a few clear, sharp strokes, 
like sketches : 

" For instance, you go on a matter of business to 
see somebody whom you don't know. You chafe with 
annoyance as you cross the threshold. In spite of 
the material duty which you are performing, you 
consider that it is so much time wasted. Then, 
for some unknown reason, the atmosphere seems 
kindly. You find familiar things in the room where 
you are waiting: a picture which you might have 
chosen yourself, books which you know and like, 
things which look as if your own hand had arranged 
them. And you forget everything. With your fore- 
head against the pane, you look at the roofs of the 



«§fr 248 *§► 

houses, at the streets, at all that little scene which 
is the constant companion of an existence which you 
do not know and with which you are about to come 
into touch; and your heart beats very fast, for a 
sort of foresight tells you that a friend is going to 
enter the room." 

" That's quite true ; and sometimes even we have 
already met him at some house or other; but then 
his mind displayed itself in a special attitude, inac- 
cessible, motionless, lifeless, like a thing in a glass 
case. Now, we see him before us, in his own sur- 
roundings; and everything is changed. He has a 
smile which is made of just the same quality of af- 
fection as our own, a look instinct with the same sort 
of experience, a laugh that cheerfully faces like dan- 
gers, a mind responding to the same springs. And 
we talk and are contented and happy ; and, when the 
sun enters at the window or when the fire flickers 
merrily in the hearth, we can easily picture spending 
the rest of our life there, in gladness and comfort. 
Anything that the one says is received by the other 
with an exclamation of delight. Yes, we have felt 
and seen things in the same way ; and this little fact, 
natural though it may seem, is so rare that it appears 
extraordinary ! " 



4* 249 «§► 

With an abrupt movement that must be customary 
with him, my companion shook his head to fling back 
his thick hair, which darkened his forehead whenever 
he leant forward: 

" And very often," he said, " you don't see each 
other again, or at least you don't see each other like 
that, because time is too swift and because every- 
body has to go his own road." 

The bright shaft of sunlight was still between us. 
It came now from a higher point of the little win- 
dow. In the shimmering dust, I conjured up the 
faces of scarce-seen friends. There were some whose 
features had become almost obliterated ; but beyond 
them, as one sees an image in a crystal, I clearly per- 
ceived the ideas, the life, the soul that had for a 
moment throbbed on exactly the same level as my 
own. 

I replied, in a very low voice : 

" We remain infinitely grateful to people who have 
given us such minutes as those ! " 

And then, certain of hearing myself echoed, I cried, 
delightedly : 

" Egoists should always be grateful and responsive, 
for gratitude is nothing but happiness prolonged by 
thought. . . ." 



«§* 250 *§•> 

" Yes, that is the whole secret of the responsive 
soul: to have sufficient impetus not to stop the sen- 
sation at the place where the joy itself stops." 

" To have simply, like the runner, an impetus that 
carries us beyond the goal. . . ." 



4 



Thus were our remarks unrolled like the links of 
one and the same chain; and yet how different were 
our two existences ! His was devoid of all restless- 
ness and agitation; and mine was still in need of it. 
His intelligence was active, but not at all anxious to 
appear so. For him, meditation was the great ob- 
ject; and, when I expressed my admiration of a 
modesty impossible to my own undisciplined pride, 
he replied, in all simplicity: 

" Do not look upon this as modesty. The over- 
modest are often those whose pride is too great to 
find room on the surface." 

" If I were a man or an older woman than I am," 
I said, laughingly, " I would choose your destiny ; 
but, for the time being, I feel a genuine need to 
satisfy my youth and to give it a few of the little 
pleasures that suit it." 



& 251 *§► 

He tried to jest, like most men who disapprove of 
the trouble which we take to please them by making 
ourselves prettier or more brilliant ; but at heart he 
was as fond as myself of feminine cajolery and 
frivolity. 

" You are full of pride," I exclaimed, " when you 
have accomplished some noble action or produced 
some rare work of art ; then why should not women 
be happy at realising in their persons consummate 
beauty and grace? It is very probable that, if Plato 
or Socrates had suddenly been turned into beautiful 
young creatures, their destiny would have been dif- 
ferent from what it was ; it is even exceedingly pro- 
bable that wisdom would have prompted them very 
often to lay aside their writings and come and con- 
template their charms in the admiration of men ! " 

I quoted the words uttered by a woman who had 
known and loved admiration in her day: 

" If life were longer, I would devote as many 
hours to my body as I now do to my mind; and I 
should be right. Unfortunately, I have to make 
a choice ; and my very love of beauty makes me turn 
to that which does not fade. . . ." 



«§* 252 *§> 
5 

We should certainly have gone on talking for hours 
and without tiring; but suddenly we both together 
remembered that Rose must be waiting for me at 
my house and I rose to go. 

As I did so, I said: 

" I happen not to know your Christian name. 
What is it? " 

" Floris." 

Floris ! That name, so little known in France but 
very frequent in Holland, surprised me; and I had 
some difficulty in not saying: 

" Then you are not a Frenchman? " 

But all that I said was : 

" Floris, you shall have your Rose ! " 



Chapter XII 



GOING down the stairs, I laughed to myself and 
said: 

" It is really one of love's miracles, that that man 
should be interested in Rose. And yet, to a philoso- 
pher, does not that beautiful girl offer a very un- 
usual sense of security? From the point of view 
of the life which I had planned for her, she is a fail- 
ure ; but will she not be perfect in the eyes of a lover, 
of a man who expects nothing from her but an occa- 
sion for dreams and pleasure? " 

Filled with gladness, I hastened my steps. Al- 
though it was the end of winter, it was still freezing ; 
and it was pleasant to hear the sound of my feet 
on the hard ground. I also noticed the noises of the 
street : they were sharp and distinct ; and in the crisp 
air things were all black and white, as though etched 
in dry-point. 

For a moment, my dream vanished ; then suddenly 
I became aware of it and I rifled a shop of its flow- 



«§* 254 til- 
ers and jumped into a cab in order to be with my 
Roseline the sooner. 



Rose and Floris ! The delicious combination filled 
my heart to bursting-point. Is it not always some 
insignificant little accident that sets our impressions 
overflowing? Like a child, at the last minute, I had 
felt a wish to know what he was called ; and I was de- 
lighted to find that it was a name full of grace and 
colour. Now all my thoughts clustered around those 
harmonious syllables. Those remarkable eyes, that 
dark hair with its faint wave, that sensitive heart, 
that profound intellect, powerful and yet a little 
tired, like a tree bowed down with fruit : all this went 
through life under the name of Floris ! 

Then I saw once more his face, his gentleness, his 
profound charm; and I never doubted the girl's 
secret assent. In my fond hope, I went to the length 
of imagining that she had wished to choose her life 
for herself, independent of my influence ; that she had 
at last understood that, in order to please me, she 
must first assert her liberty, without fear of hurting 
or vexing me. It was an illusion, certainly; but 



4* 255 *§* 

there are times when joy thrusts aside reason in or- 
der to burst into full blossom, even as in moments 
of sorrow our despair often goes beyond reality to 
drain itself to the last drop in one passionate out- 
pouring. 



3 



Rose was sitting in the drawing-room, waiting for 
me. I rushed in like a mad thing, without knowing 
what I was doing. My laughter, my flowers, my 
words all came together and fell upon her like a 
shower of joy. In one breath I told her of my in- 
discretion of the night before, of those stolen sensa- 
tions, of my anguish, of my life at a standstill, wait- 
ing on theirs, of my delightful talk with Floris, of 
the sympathy between us and lastly of my convic- 
tion that happiness was being offered to her here 
and now. 

Then I noticed that she said nothing; and, beg- 
ging her pardon for my incoherence, I tried to ex- 
press in serious words the future that awaited her. 
But all those glad impressions had dazzled me; I 
was like some one who comes suddenly from the 
bright sunshine into a room. Shadows fell and rose 



«§* 256 *§•> 

before my brain as before eyes that have looked too 
long at the light; and I could do nothing but kiss 
her and repeat: 

" Believe me, happiness lies there ! Seize it, seize 
it!" 

At last she murmured, wearily: 

" No, I can't do it." 

I questioned her, anxiously : 

" Perhaps there is some obstacle that separates 
you? Do you dislike him? " 

" No, I know his whole life and I have nothing 
against him." 

" Well, then ... ? " 

I tried in vain to obtain a definite reply. Her 
soul was shut, walled in, almost hostile. Was she 
refusing herself, as she had once given herself, with- 
out knowing why? Or else was my vague intuition 
correct and was a latent energy escaping from that 
little low, square forehead, white and pure as a 
camellia, a force of which she herself was unaware 
and which no doubt would one day reveal to me the 
final choice of her life ? 

I made her sit down and, kneeling beside her, 
questioned her patiently and gently as one asks a sick 
child to describe the pain which one is anxious to 



4* 257 *§* 

relieve. Silently, gazing vaguely into space, she let 
herself rest on my shoulder. The flowers fell from 
her listless hands. Some still hung to her dress, with 
tangled stalks. Red carnations, mimosa, tuberose, 
narcissus, hyacinths drunk with perfume, guelder- 
roses and white lilac wept at her feet. 

I rose slowly and looked at her, my heart aching 
for the heedless one who dropped the joys which 
chance laid in her arms! 



PART THE THIRD 






Chapter I 



The reason why we judge people better after a 
lapse of time is that, when we look at them from a 
distance, there is no confusion of detail. The main 
lines of their character stand out, relieved of the 
thousand little alterations and erasures which the 
scrupulous hand of truth is constantly making as it 
passes hither and thither, now rubbing out, now re- 
drawing, until at last the impression is no longer a 
very clear one. 

From the day when I separated my life completely 
from the life of Rose, her character appeared to me 
distinctly ; and at the same time, now that it was free 
to come down to its own level, it asserted itself in 
its turn. Until that moment, while I had been care- 
ful to put no pressure upon her, I had nevertheless 
been asking her to choose her tastes and occupations 
on a plane that was unsuitable for her. 

Her moral outlook was good, true and not at all 
silly, but it was limited; and, in trying to make her 



see life swiftly and from above, as though in a bird's- 
eye view, I had made it impossible for her to dis- 
tinguish anything. 

Her fault was that she had not been able to change, 
mine was that I had had too much faith in her pos- 
sibilities. My optimism had wound itself around her 
immobility and fastened to it, even as ivy coils around 
a stone statue, without communicating to it the 
smallest portion of its sturdy and luxuriant little 
life. 



And now it is six months since we parted; and I 
am going to-day to see her for the first time in her 
new existence. 

I look out of the window of the railway-carriage ; 
and my mind calls up memories which glide past with 
the autumn fields. First comes the departure of 
Floris, wearied by the incomprehensible attitude of 
the girl. He went away shortly after our meeting, 
still philosophical and cheerful, in spite of his disap- 
pointment. And the part which he played in my 
experiment taught me something that guided my 
efforts into a fresh direction: if Rose's beauty was 



«§* 263 *§> 

to him sufficient compensation for her commonplace 
character, could not I also accept the girl as some- 
thing out of which to weave romance and beauty? 
Does not everything lie in the mere fact of consent? 
Passive and silent, would she not become a rare ob- 
ject in my life, a precious stone? 

" Woman blossoms into fullest flower by doing 
nothing," some one has said. " Women who do not 
work form the beauty of the world." 

I took Rose to live with me and for weeks devoted 
myself exclusively to her appearance and her man- 
ners. I sought if possible to perfect the exterior. 
It was all in vain. This beautiful creature was so 
totally ignorant of what beauty meant that she was 
constantly deforming herself; and I at last gave up 
the struggle. 

Sadly I remember the last pulsation of my will. It 
happened in the silence of my heart; and life went 
on for a little while longer. Would it not have been 
hateful to send Rose away, as one dismisses a ser- 
vant? And what act, what fault had she committed 
to deserve such treatment? When it would have been 
so sweet to me to give her everything, for no reason 
at all, how could I find a solid reason for taking 
everything from her? 



«§* 264 *§► 

So I said nothing to her; we had none of those 
horrible explanations which set bristling spikes on 
the barriers — inevitable barriers, alas ! — which dis- 
similarities in taste or character raise between peo- 
ple. There are certain persons who cannot bear to 
make any change without a preliminary explanation. 
They seem to carry a sort of map in their heads: 
on the far side of the frontier that borders the 
friendly territory lies the enemy; and it needs but 
a word, a gesture, a difference of opinion for you to 
find yourself in exile. Alas, have we not enough with 
all the limits, demarcations, laws and judgments that 
are perhaps necessary to the world at large? And 
must we lay upon ourselves still others in the inti- 
mate relations of life? 

I had no right to set myself up as a judge and I 
could not have pronounced sentence. I waited. And, 
my will being no longer in the way, circumstances 
gradually led my companion to her true destiny bet- 
ter than I could have done. 

She was bored. She was not really made to be a 
purely decorative object. In spite of her trailing 
silk or velvet dresses, twenty times a day I would 
find her in the larder, with a loaf under her arm and 
a knife in her hand, contentedly buttering thick 



«§* 265 *§* 

slices of bread, which she would eat slowly in huge 
mouthfuls, looking straight before her as she did so. 

She was bored; and I was powerless to cure this 
unfamiliar ill. I looked out some work for her in 
my busy life. She wrote letters, kept my accounts, 
hemmed the maids' aprons. Soon she was running 
the errands. One day she answered the front-door. 

I still remember that moment when she came and 
told me, in her pretty, gentle way, that there was 
some one to see me in the drawing-room. I do not 
know why, but that insignificant incident suddenly 
revealed the truth to me. I was ashamed of myself 
and turned away my head so that she should not see 
me blush. Poor child, she was unconsciously lower- 
ing herself more and more daily. She was becoming 
my property. I was making use of her. 

Without saying anything, I at once began to 
search for something for her. I hesitated between 
first one thing and then another; but at last chance 
came to my aid. Country-bred as she was, the girl 
was losing her colour in the Paris air; she was or- 
dered to leave town. She knew a family at Neufcha- 
tel, in Normandy, who were willing to take her as a 
boarder for a few weeks. She went and did not come 
back. 



4* 266 *§> 



What did she do there, how did she spend her 
time? She wrote to me before long that she was 
quite happy, that she was earning her livelihood with- 
out difficulty. There was a little linen-draper's shop, 
it seemed, kept by an old maid, who, having no rela- 
tions of her own, had taken Rose to assist her at 
first and perhaps to succeed her in time. 

I was not at all surprised. For that matter, when 
we follow the natural evolution of things, their con- 
clusion comes so softly that we hardly notice it. It 
is the descent which we are approaching: it becomes 
less steep at every step and, when we reach it, it is 
only a faint depression in the ground. 



4 



Strange temperament ! The more I think of it, the 
more it appears to me as an instance of the dangers 
of virtue, or at least of what we understand by the 
word. Does it not look as though, in the charts of 
our characters, the virtues are the ultimate goals 
which can be reached only by the way of our faults ? 
Each virtue stands like a golden statue in the centre 



«§* 267 *e* 

of a cross-roads. We can hardly know every side 
of it unless we have beheld it from the various paths 
that lead to it. It shines in a different manner at 
the end of each road. 

Rose never became conscious of her good quali- 
ties, because she possessed them too naturally; and 
she remained poor in the midst of all the riches which 
she was unable to discern. 

Oh, if only she had been less wise and had had 
that ardour, that flame which feeds on all that is 
thrown upon it to extinguish it ; if she had had that 
inordinate prodigality which teaches us by making 
us commit a thousand acts of folly; if, in short, she 
had had faults, vices, impulses of curiosity, how dif- 
ferent her fate would have been ! The equilibrium 
of a person's character may be compared with that 
of a pair of scales; and it is safe to say that, by 
weighing more heavily upon one of these, our defects 
raise our good qualities to their highest level. 



But every minute is now bringing me nearer to 
this life which I am at last to know ; and I gaze 
absent-mindedly at the Bray country, that lovely 



<& 268 *§> 

country red with the gold of autumn. By force of 
habit, my nerves spell out a few sensations which my 
thoughts do not put into words. My heart is beat- 
ing. Now, with no idea or purpose in my mind, I 
am speeding with a full heart towards the girl who 
was at least the inspiration of a splendid hope and 
above all an incentive to action. 



Chapter II 



I ARRIVED at Neufchatel at the gracious hour when 
the sun is paling; and I was at once charmed with 
the kindly aspect of this little Norman town. 

The house-fronts gleaming with fresh paint, the 
pigeons picking their way across the streets, the grass 
growing between the cobble-stones, the flowers out- 
side the windows and doors, a cleanliness that adorns 
the smallest details : all this is so calm and so empty 
that our life at once settles there as in a frame that 
takes with equal ease the happy or the sad picture 
which we propose to fit into it. 

It reminds me of Bruges, whose infinite, patient 
calm is a clean page on which the visitor's life is 
printed, happy or distressful at will, since there is 
nothing to define its character. It also has the si- 
lence of the little Flemish towns, with their streets 
without carriages or wayfarers. The gardens look 
as though they were artificial; and in the frame of 



«§* 270 *§► 

the open windows we see interiors which are as sharp 
as pictures. 

Leading out of the main street is a mysterious 
little alley, dark and badly paved. It runs upwards 
and ends in a clump of trees arching against the 
blue of the sky. There is no visible gate or door- 
way. I turn up it. All along a high wall hang old 
fire-backs, bas-reliefs of cracked, rusty-red iron, once 
licked by the flames, now washed by the rain. 

I loiter to examine the subjects: coats of arms, 
trophies of weapons, or allegories and half-obliter- 
ated love-scenes. It is curious to see these homely 
relics thus exposed in the street, conjuring up the 
peaceful soul of families gathered round the hearth. 
From over the wall, the air reaches me laden with 
hallowed fragrance. I picture the box-bordered walks 
on the other side. 

Then I climb higher; and, when I come to the 
trees, I find a charming surprise. The public gardens 
lie in front of me. In the shade of the public gar- 
dens we seem to find the very spirit of a town; it is 
to the gardens or to the church that our curiosity 
always turns in the first place. Here is the walk 
edged with stone benches on which old men and old 
women sit coughing and gossiping; here mothers 



4* 271 *§> 

bring their work, while their children run about; 
and in the centre, at the junction of the paths, 
is the platform where the regimental band plays on 
Sundays. 

The Neufchatel gardens are in no way elaborate: 
a number of avenues have been cut out of an ancient 
wood; and that is all. There are no shrubs; just 
a patch of dahlias, with a ridiculous little iron rail- 
ing round them. But its whole charm lies in its pic- 
turesque situation up above the town. In between 
the tall trees with their interlacing boughs, one can 
see the slopes of the hills, the plains, the meadows, 
the gleaming roofs and the church with its twin spires 
piercing the blue of the sky. Then, in the fore- 
ground, I see, behind the houses, the little gardens 
whose breath reached me just now. They are there, 
divided into small plots of equal size, simple or pre- 
tentious, sometimes humble kitchen-gardens, but 
sometimes also a patchwork adorned with grottoes, 
arbours and glass bells. 

Rose mentioned a garden which brightens her lit- 
tle home. Suppose it were one of these ! . . . A 
woman appears over there : she is tall and fair-haired. 
She stoops over a well; I cannot make out her fea- 
tures. She draws herself up again. Oh, no, her 



<§* 272 *§► 

figure is clumsy, her hair looks dull and colour- 
less and her clothes vulgar. Rose would never dress 
like that, in two colours that clash! Rose would 
never . . . 

I wander into a delicious reverie. How infinitely 
superior Rose is to all these people whose lives I can 
picture around me. Two women sit cackling beside 
me on the bench : they are at once guileless and bad, 
with their mania for eternally wagging tongues that 
know no rest. A little farther on, a good housewife 
is shaking her troublesome child ; a stout, overdressed 
woman of the shop-keeping class is flaunting her 
finery down one of the walks ; a priest passes and, 
while his lips mumble prayers, his eyes, held in leash 
by fear, prowl around me ; one of his flock curtseys 
to the ground as she meets him. 

A protest rises in my heart at each of the little 
incidents : is not Rose rid of all that? Rose long ago 
gave up going to mass and confession. She has lost 
the hypocritical sense of shame, knows 'neither envy 
nor malice and is a stranger to all ostentation. 

I often used to reproach her with her extreme hu- 
mility. How wrong I was ! I now think that this 
humility can achieve the same result as pride itself. 
One looks too high, the other too low ; but both pass 



4* 273 *§* 

by the petty vanities of life and either of them can 
keep us equally indifferent to those vanities. 



2 



I rose from my seat with a happy heart. The time 
had come for me to go in search of her. I would 
kiss her in all gratitude. Had she not enlarged my 
will to the extent of making it admit her little 
existence? 

I went through the silent streets, in search of 
the charming, old-world name that was to tell me 
where the aged spinster lived. Rose had said that 
I should see it written over the door in blue letters 
and that it was opposite a place where they sold 
sportsmen's and anglers' requisites, a shop with 
a sign that would be certain to attract my at- 
tention. 

I therefore walked along with a sure step and sud- 
denly, at a street-corner, saw a great silver fish flash- 
ing to and fro in the breeze at the end of a long 
line. Soon I was in a quiet backwater of the town. 
There it was ! Opposite me, the last gleams of the 
setting sun shed their radiance on a very bright 
little house covered with a luxuriant vine. On one 



«§* 274 *§► 

side, in the same golden light, the name of Isaline 
Coquet smiled in sky-blue letters. 

The shop was white, with pearl-grey shutters ; and 
on the ledges were bunchy plants gay with pink, 
starry flowers. In the window, a few starched caps 
looked as if they were talking scandal on their re- 
spective stands. 

I walked in. The opening of the door roused the 
tongue of a little rusty bell, but nobody came. On 
a big grandfather's chair, near the counter, were a 
pair of spectacles and a book. Perhaps Mile. Coquet 
had run away when she caught sight of me through 
the panes ; Rose said that she was shy and a little 
frightened at the thought of my coming visit. And 
I had the pleasure of looking for my Rose as I fol- 
lowed the mysterious turns of a primitive passage. 

The walls were spotless and the red-tiled floor 
shone in the half-light. I crossed a neat little 
kitchen, just as a cuckoo-clock was chiming five, and 
found myself on the threshold of a small room open- 
ing on a garden. Rose was sitting in the wide, low 
window. 

The noise of the clock no doubt deadened the 
sound of my steps, for the girl did not turn her head. 
The room exhaled a faint perfume as of incense and 



musk; and I seemed to hold all her peaceful little 
life in my breath and in that swift glance. All that 
I could see of her face was one cheek and the tips 
of her long eyelashes. Placed as she was in front 
of the light, a golden haze shaded the colours of 
her beautiful hair; and I lingered in contemplation 
of the long and graceful curve of her figure bending 
over her work. She was sewing in the midst of 
floods of stiff white muslin, which formed a chain 
of snow-clad peaks with blue reflections around her. 
I looked at the low-ceilinged room with its white- 
washed wall and its rows of bodices, petticoats and 
shiny caps hanging on lines stretched from one side 
to the other. A grey tom-cat lay purring on a cor- 
ner of the table ; and, near it, in a well-scrubbed pot, 
a pink geranium displayed its sombre leaves and its 
bright flowers. 

Rose was sewing. At regular intervals, her right 
arm rose, drew out the thread and returned to the 
spot whence it started: an even and captive movement 
symbolical of the amount of activity permitted to 
women ! But was she not to choose that movement 
among all others? 



«§* 276 *§> 



We dine in her bedroom. What a surprise her 
room held in store for me! Rose had arranged it 
herself, in harmony with the simplicity which I 
loved. 

Brightly-painted wooden shelves make patches of 
colour on the white walls; the furniture is rustic; 
and the curtains of white muslin with mauve spots 
complete the frank and artless harmony of the room. 
How little this was to be expected from Mile. Co- 
quet's shop! 

Then, on Rose's table, the books I gave her fill 
the place of honour. I dare say that she never reads 
them ; and yet I am glad to see them here. 

Rose goes to and fro between our little table and 
the kitchen. She looks pretty, she smiles. The slow- 
ness of her movements is no longer lethargic ; it sim- 
ply exhales an air of repose, a perfume of peace 
that suits her beauty. Her eyes have fastened on 
me at once and, as in the old days, never leave me. 

Is it the tyranny of habit that used to prevent 
me from reading anything in them? Now, those eyes 
that ingenuously drink in my life as the flowers do 
the light, those eyes not veiled by any shadow, con- 



4* 277 *§■> 

stantly bring the tears to mine. She sees this and 
fondly lays her head on my shoulder, whispering : 

" I did nothing but expect you, darling, only I had 
given up hoping. . . ." 

This term of endearment, which she addresses to 
me for the first time, as if, being no longer subject 
to any effort, she were at last yielding to the sweets 
of friendship, this expression and my Christian 
name, which she utters lovingly, complete the pleas- 
antness of the evening. 

I feel happy amid it all. We who were brought 
up in the country never lose our appreciation of its 
peaceful charm. It bows down our lives as we bow 
our forehead in our hands to think beyond our im- 
mediate surroundings ; and from its narrow circle 
we are better able to judge the expanse which has 
become necessary to us. 



The night rises, things fade away. The sky is a 
deep blue in the frame of the open window. Rose 
brings the lamp : 

" It was the first companion of my solitude," she 
says, reminiscently ; then, laughing, " the compan- 



<§* 278 *§•> 

ion of my boredom, the companion of those long, long 
evenings. . . ." 

"But now, dearest? . . ." 

" Ah, now, the days are too short : I have a thou- 
sand duties to perform, my dear little old woman to 
look after, my customers, my flowers, my animals ; 
then, in the evening, we often have a caller : the priest, 
the notary, the neighbours. . . ." 

Then, suddenly fearing that she has hurt me, she 
adds, in a caressing tone : 

" When I am with them, I am always talking about 
you, so as to comfort myself for the loss of you ; for 
that is my only sorrow." 



An hour or two later, sitting in the garden, we 
watched the stars appearing one by one. Our arms 
were round each other; our fair tresses were inter- 
mingled. We were at the far end of the town. We 
heard the sounds of the country ringing in the trans- 
parent air; and the crystal voice of the frogs, that 
small, clear note falling steadily and marking time 
to our thoughts. We were quiet, like everything 
around us, unstirred by a breath of wind. 



4* 279 *§> 

Rose spoke of her happiness ; and I never wearied 
of inhaling that delicious tranquillity. I had been 
thinking of settling her future for her. And what 
an inestimable lesson I was learning from her ! Rose 
was one of those whose road must be marked from 
hour to hour by a little duty of some kind or an- 
other. It is thus, by limiting themselves, that these 
characters arrive at knowing and asserting them- 
selves. She said, blithely, " my room," " my gar- 
den," " my house ; " and I smiled as I reflected that 
I had once struggled to rid that mind of all useless 
bonds. 



6 



What a mistake I had made! In order to find 
her life, she had had to earn it and to recognise it in 
the very things that now belonged to it, to mark 
every hour of it with humdrum tasks, to create for 
herself little troubles on her own level, difficulties 
which her good sense could easily overcome. There 
was nothing unexpected, nothing far-reaching in her 
life, never an event beyond the tinkle of the shop- 
bell announcing a customer, a little bell with a short, 
sharp, cracked ring, stopping on a single note with- 



«§* 280 *§► 

out vibration, as though it were the very voice of 
the little souls which it excited. 

In contrast with this humble destiny, I considered 
my own full of difficulty and agitation, so crowded 
and yet doubtless equally empty; I followed in my 
mind's eye the lives of my friends; and I reflected 
that the nature of us women, alike of the most way- 
ward and the most direct, is too delicate and too 
complex for us easily to keep our balance in a state 
of complete liberty. 

" When we achieve it," I said to Rose, " it is 
thanks to a close and constant observation of our- 
selves ; for woman never has any real moral strength. 
Self-sacrifice and kindness alone lend us some, be- 
cause our capacity for loving knows no limit: our 
strength is then a loan which we make to. ourselves 
at difficult moments by a miracle of love. Once the 
crisis is over, we have to pay . . . with interest ! " 

" In Paris," said Rose, " even from the very first, 
I had a feeling that I should never dare to move in 
the absolute liberty that was offered me. You are 
not angry with me ? " 

" How could I be? We were both wanderers, you 
and I, where circumstances led us, both of us with 
a passion for sincerity, both of us with the best of 



«§* 281 *§•> 

intentions. A cleverer mind than mine would doubt- 
less have saved you from going out of your way. 
It had many unnecessary turnings. But perhaps 
they had their uses. . . ." 

" Yes," replied my friend, wisely, " for without 
them, I should not have been so certain that my 
choice was right. . . ." 

7 

Around us the mysterious life of the night was 
gradually awaking. All the animals that shun the 
daylight were beginning to stir. A hedgehog 
brushed against my skirt. In the grass, two glow- 
worms summoned love with all their fires. The smell 
of the garden became overpowering. Our movements 
and our words throbbed in a scented air. Rose leant 
towards me: 

" There is one thought that troubles me," she said. 
"Have I discouraged you? Will others better 
equipped than I still find you ready to lend them a 
helping hand? " 

"Why not, Roseline?" And I would have liked 
to put my very soul into the kiss which I gave her. 
" No, you have not discouraged me. The only thing 
that matters is to have the power to choose what 



«§* 282 *§► 

suits us. Then alone is it possible for us to develop 
ourselves without restraint. With your limited hori- 
zon, you are freer, darling, than when you were liv- 
ing with me, at the mercy of all the fancies which you 
did not know how to use. Everything is relative; 
and instinct makes no mistakes. Yours, by placing 
you here among the lives which I can imagine, 
gives you the opportunity of excelling. You felt 
that you needed to live under conditions in which the 
effort and the merit would lie in not changing, in 
which action would be immobility. You know, Rose, 
there is always some common ground in human be- 
ings ; to reach it, if you do not stoop, the others will 
raise themselves. With your beauty which is the 
wonder of every one you meet, with that gentleness 
which wins all hearts and with your soul which no 
longer knows either malice or prayer, you will be a 
new example of life to all around you." 

Rose was sitting on a higher chair than mine; 
and this allowed me to let my head sink into her lap. 
I no longer dreamt of looking at the splendour of 
the night, for was it not throbbing in my heart, 
where a star woke every moment ? And I thought out 
loud: 

"You were always asking me the object of my 



<& 283 *§* 

efforts. Do you now understand that I could not 
explain what I myself did not understand perfectly 
until you revealed it to me? " 

I reflected for a moment and continued : 

" We can wish nothing for others nor force any- 
thing on them: we can only help them to clear the 
field before and within themselves. . . ." 

She murmured: 

" I understand." 

And I cried: 

" Ah, my dearest, how grateful I am to you ! In 
looking for you, I have found myself a little more ; 
and it is always so ; and that, you see, is why we must 
love action. However tiny, however humble, it may 
be, it brings us at the same time the knowledge of 
others and of ourselves. We appear to fling our- 
selves stout-heartedly into the stream whose currents 
we cannot foresee; we are hurt, we are wounded, we 
struggle; but, when we return to the bank, we feel 
invigorated and refreshed." 

Roseline stroked my forehead lightly with her 
hands and softly whispered: 

" There was nothing lacking to my peace of mind 
but your approval. Now I am happy and I can begin 
my life without anxiety." 



Chapter III 



ROSE was still asleep when I entered the drowsy 
bedroom to bid her good-bye. A small, heart-shaped 
opening in the middle of the shutters allowed the 
first ray of daylight to penetrate. Sleeping happily 
and trustfully, with streaming hair and hands out- 
flung, she lay strewn like the petals of a flower. I 
laid my lips on hers and softly went away. 

As I climb the slope that leads out of Neufchatel, 
I turn and look down once more on the little town 
that slumbers everlastingly in its rich peace. Just 
there, by the church, I picture the house with its 
grey shutters, its white front and its starched caps 
behind the flower-pots. Beyond, the green horizons 
and the blue hill-sides stand clearly marked in the 
dawning sun ; and I gaze and gaze as far as my eyes 
can see, through my lashes sparkling with tears. 

For all her lethargy, her slumber as of a beautiful 
plant, the soul of my Rose is wholesome, wholesome 
as those meadows, those fields, all that good Norman 



«§* 285 *§* 

earth which gave her to me miserable only to take her 
back happy and free. Certainly, Rose has not been 
able to achieve the strength that makes use of liberty: 
in that life, still so young, the will is a dead 
branch through which the sap no longer flows. At 
any rate, what she does possess she will not lose; 
she is one of those who instinctively hold in their 
breath so as not to tarnish the pane through which 
a glimpse of infinity stands revealed to them. Her 
soul could not take in unlimited happiness, it had 
to feel a touch of sorrow in order to taste a little 
joy. There are many like her, people who perceive 
that the light is good when they come out of the 
darkness, but who are not able to recognise the light 
in the radiant beauty of the noon-day fields. 

The sun rises as I slowly make my way up-hill; 
the wood along the road is still wet with the dawn. 
It offers me its autumnal fragrance; I breathe it in, 
I gaze at its golden tints, I think of Rose, of her 
past and her future. But, beyond my dreams, an 
unformed idea seems to spread like a clear sky, with- 
out outline, without colour, without beginning or end ; 
and I have a secret feeling that I shall try again. 



& 286 *§► 



I shall go towards other strangers. I shall seek 
at random among hearts and souls ! Fearlessly, in 
spite of censure and derision, I shall lavish my con- 
fidence in order to win that of others. I shall not 
linger over the vain pleasure of discovering the traces 
of my power. We can pour out our influence boldly : 
it is a wine that excites no two souls in a like man- 
ner; and we are always ignorant what the nature of 
the intoxication will be, whether fruitful or barren, 
blithe or cheerless. 

I shall go towards other strangers ; I understand 
now that my sole ambition is to bring life within 
their reach. What matter what their thoughts, their 
loves, their wishes, if at least they have acquired the 
taste and the means of thinking, loving and wishing? 

Shall I ever succeed in evolving from this passion 
of mine a method, a system that will make my action 
less blind and uncertain? I think not. 

In a life that never offers us anything logical or 
foreseen, our moral nature must needs resemble a 
drapery that is folded backwards and forwards over 
events, souls or circumstances. Let us ask no more 
than that it be beautiful and soft, strong and light, 



4* 287 *§* 

submissive to the least breath and ready to be trans- 
formed at its command. Nothing but an essential 
principle of humanity and loving-kindness can serve 
as a foundation for our actions, without ever confi- 
ning them. 



3 



On the one hand, we have effort, nearly always 
vain ; on the other, knowledge, which is the second 
look that makes us discern the ordinary, the com- 
monplace, where at first we beheld beauty and charm. 
Nevertheless, let us worship effort and knowledge 
above all things. 

Let us act as simply as the little wave that lifts 
itself and breaks against the rock. Others come 
after it; and it is their light kisses which, all un- 
seen, end by biting into t«he granite. 



THE END 



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